Glyph "Remind Us of the Sun"

    Emerging from some frozen dominion surround by infinite darkness, Glyph has finally decided to unleash their debut full-length album upon the metal world. “Remind Us of the Sun,” is a raw black metal release that journeys into insidious sounding musical realms shrouded in a suffocating mist of distorted chaos. 

    Not much is known about this artist, which I find adds to the album’s mystique and establishes this haunting presence which can be felt throughout the release. I’ve reviewed a couple Glyph demos before receiving this promo, however this full-length album seems to build off of the previous releases in terms of recording quality and overall production. The riffs on this album are extremely chaotic sounding and go against what one might expect from a typical black metal band by experimenting with different tempos and creating very unorthodox sounding atmospheres.

    The album’s opening track, “Of the Cinders,” begins with a very hypnotic sounding composition which transitions into a more blizzard like black metal approach. This artist is extremely open to altering tempos and messing around with dissonant chord progressions. As much as I enjoy the dynamic style at times, there are moments on this album where I felt a bit overwhelmed as though the direction of the music was going off of the path, but for the most part the music grasps you with a wicked sounding confidence. Tracks like, “Lost Beyond Time” and “Who Lies Dormant,” are a couple of songs that really stood out when listening to the album, especially when pertaining to the music’s overall malevolent sounding tone. Although the production quality on this album might not meet the standards of some black metal purists, I personally felt as though Glyph captures the dark and ominous energy quite well. 

    Towards the end of the album I felt as though the arrangements continued to provide that classic raw black metal sound, as well as the atmospheres expanding into directions that bring hope for more exploration on future releases. The song that stole the show for me was, “Relics of the Precursors,” which I thought was a manifestation of classic sounding black metal with some subtle touches of atmospheric black metal elements as well. Glyph’s ability to record harsh compositions with some slight catchy and mesmerizing atmospheric elements is what I believe will allow this artist to really standout amongst the other modern black metal artists. 

    “Remind Us of the Sun,” is an album that does stay true to what black metal fans have come to expect from artists who play this style of music, however, I find when listening closely that Glyph has a tremendous amount of potential that will hopefully be utilized on future releases. I look forward to what Glyph has to offer in the future, although I highly recommend people check out, "Remind Us of the Sun," as this type of music definitely captures the unforgiving and sinister essence of black metal. 

Link to Glyph Bandcamp (Album comes out February 18th, 2022) :

https://keeperoftheglyph.bandcamp.com/album/remind-us-of-the-sun