Choria: Black Secret Beyond Of Nature (Album review)

CHORIA - Black Secret Beyond Of Nature

Release date: 10/10/2018

Label: Limited Blasting Production
By: Xenia Kromann

My first impression by looking at the album cover while listening to the first track was that it was very inspired by the great Elderwind's 'The Magic of Nature'. Even the album title is what also made me think this way, and after listening to it a couple of times, I had so many positive thoughts about this new release of theirs.

Choria is an atmospheric black metal band from Bogor, Indonesia, that was created in 2016. Last year they came out with their first demo and now they just released their debut full-length album 'Black Secret Beyond of Nature' by the Indonesian label Limited Blasting Production - and it is just remarkable!

The opening track 'Secret Ancient I - Forest Cold South' is an instrumental beauty! Tranquilizing we are led into their world with the sounds of waterfalls and fresh wind. We are introduced to this calm melody of beautiful and alluring keyboard notes together with a perfectly coordinated guitar riff. 'Secret Ancient II - Nature Teaches' is next up! This track breaks out very atmospheric, straight forward with a noticeably melodic guitar riff and bursting drums. This is the first track with vocals, it is powerful, harsh and build up by all the instruments that compliments it. There are these little pieces of guitar riffs that are repeated and fits perfectly with the way the vocal is recorded. With a drum kick 'Secret Ancient III - Natural Life Outside of Dome' starts. By building itself up, this song has very exploding drums as its signature. Majestic vocals are bringing this track to life, the pain and despair in it is just incredible!

'Magic Behind Turnaround of Winter' begins in a slow pace, almost doomy, but with this insane melodic guitar sound. Again, the vocals appear and just rips your soul apart with its sadness, almost broken feeling. The atmosphere is mighty! Halfway through the album we got this long song 'Vast Stretches of Ocean' that opens with some straight rocky guitar and the song escalates hereafter creating a greater feeling. This track has got some serious catchy riffs and evil haunting vocals. 'Age of Sky' is this beautiful atmospheric song with this humming intro of a goddess, mixed with these painfully heart-breaking screams. Rippling beautiful guitar riffs and completely great matching drums. This song is full of emotions and very intense. Moving straight to 'Celestial sphere on air' we are kicking in to the fastest track of the album. Everything is quick and appealing. 'Past the southern pole' is just pure sadness. The vocals are sorrowful in every bit of words. The keyboards has returned since their appearance in the instrumental first track. By the end, the song gets very high upbeat like the emotions could not be hold in anymore and pure evil breaks loose. Another catchy track is coming right up! 'The sound of sky straight' has kind of this positiveness to its melodies compared to the rest of the album, along with harsh bitter shrieks. For the last track 'From winter wind to green' we got another instrumental song. Just like we started out with one, we are finishing off with one. This song feels like closure of some kind and really ends it all completely.

Everything about this album was impressive for me. Considering the fact that there is not a lot of bands within the Indonesian black metal scene I was very impressed. The vocals were just indescribable, the way it is recorded with every instrument just hit me so deeply. This is what I consider a great album.

We give this album