Beatrìk are an Italian black metal duo that released a few demos and a pair of albums in the early 2000s before unceremoniously disbanding to form other projects. While the first full-length Journey Through the End of Life showed some promise, but was ultimately held down by the narrow confines of the burgeoning DSBM style, Requiem of December on the other hand sees the band stick to their sense aesthetics but with a much more developed sense of composition.
A strained mid-pitched growl reminiscent of Wagner Antichrist’s performance on The Laws of Scourge narrates certain passages of these songs. The vocal performance is purposeful and doesn’t seek to overwhelm the listener but rather recite the story of the lyrics while accentuating the deeply sorrowful mood of this album without turning it into an attention seeking spectacle. Of note are the lyrics that don’t deal with self-deprecation and juvenile hatred for life but deep grief that can never be resolved and from that grief a realization that all beauty fades.
“May I die down there
Into my forests never forgotten
Covered by a mantle of withered leafs
May my last sigh
To breathe their sweet smell
And may I still hear
The voice of the cold wind
Among that silver trees
For the last time“
There are a great number of tempi present here even though the entire album operates at a pace slower than what would be comfortable for a black metal album as a lot of the tremolo picked notes stick out from each other and don’t feel like a continuous buzz. The drums give the illusion of the tempi being even slower than they are by playing practically everything in half-time. This makes the tempo increases a lot more impactful while still maintaining the melancholic mood of these songs and retaining the weight of each of the notes. The album’s dirge-like pace gives every single element a lot more gravitas as everything is dragged out and each idea is thoroughly exposed with no place to hide. Despite the pace, the guitarwork doesn’t descend into doom territory and sticks within the riff lexicon of black metal but because of the lack of speed every note has greater importance and the beauty of the melodies is a lot more apparent.
The most impressive aspect of this album is the wide use of melodic tools – exotic chords broken down into long arpeggios and interesting chord progressions. Many bands tend to express unorthodox ideas in long and convoluted ways but Beatrik do so in the most concise manner possible and that generally involves breaking down two chords into arpeggios and repeating the minimalistic sequence to create tension before releasing that into longer riffs. There is such a wide array of ideas being expressed but it’s done in such a restrained manner that it gives the songs their own identity without overbearing the listener with excessive information.
Like most Italian extreme metal, the songs each have a strong narrative thread that is deeply tied into the lyrics. Aesthetic elements like bird chants, organ and samples of water flowing enrich the romantic nature of the album, with the acoustic guitar that showcasing the album’s melodic language in a much more intimate manner. The band uses this to create the various ebbs and flows that express different facets of a singular mood before culminating with some truly spectacular riffs.
Requiem for a December is a genuine representation of what DSBM yearned to be but doesn’t allow itself to be contained within the limited parameters of the genre. Instead of presenting to the listener a constant barrage of “woe is me”, there are various nuances to the sorrow here as well as the willingness to go beyond the standard melodic tools and tropes of black metal to evoke a sense of grandeur that is extremely different to the melancholic ideas present in the French and Norwegian styles. It stands as the apex of 2000s DSBM and a minor classic within the black metal canon.
