For their latest EP, Kostnatění have adapted traditional turkish songs to a modern black metal context, a premise that might set off the reader’s gimmick alarms; the good news is that the band doesn’t stick to a superficially aesthetic engagement with the source material.
In the process, the band retains some vices all too typical of recent metal in what turns out to be an extravagant interpretation of these songs, expanding the original arrangements with manifold adornments and sprawling rhythmic variation (blast-beats make appearances on all tracks). Traditional instruments are used to deepen the texture, melody is mostly entrusted to the electric guitars, resulting in a distinctive (“exotic”) sound that the listener might initially find strange before being acclimatized; when this happens, the unique effect of the characteristic turkish folkloric melodies rendered through metal aesthetics will certainly occupy his attention. Perhaps the most interesting pathway opened by this method – and one of the most valuable teachings metal can take from other musical universes – is a type of songwriting not completely restricted to chromatic riffing, instead incorporating longer and more elaborate melodic ideas that can draw from a vast gamut of influences, traditional music being a worthy one.
While a certain level of intuition and compositional prowess is required to coherently weave these conflicting threads (in particular, managing the rhythmic flexibility without ever straying far from the melodic starting point), we are left wondering about the possibilities of an approach even more detached from the metal language, without compromise with its sedimented tropes. For all its flaws, this short experiment gives us a promising glimpse of what a more serious approach to traditional music can give us if metal bands go beyond the surface when handling such material. For now, Kostnatění have provided an interesting work that might provide some useful orientations for those venturing along a similar terrain.
