Graveflowers – The Hyacinth Garden [US, Raw Black] (2017)

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Self Released | 09-17-17

This release first came to me via Path of Silence who is heading up the limited physical release. Path of Silence is well known in my other life as a dungeon synth label who cryptically releases weirdo and outsider music to a handful of fanatics. The label has released black metal before with Bruid’s Cogadh but this type of music is not common for the label. Despite my surprise, the whole thing makes sense as Graveflowers, while not dungeon synth, possesses a charm for people at the very end of their mental rope.

The Hyacinth Garden is an explosive black metal record that leans heavily on certain eras of black metal but has all of the right paperwork for a successful demo. Songs like “Sevenbranched Candelabra” are fun and entertaining black metal anthems which evoke images of ghastly war bands charging over hills with candles clutched in their dead hands. The lack of information regarding this band and the emotional atmospheric black closer “Then Spoke the Thunder” makes me curious as to who this band is and what they are doing. In the space between answers we only have noise and chaos.

Graveflowers succeeds because of many things. The level of rawness and lo fidelity the band achieves while still being dynamic. Eschewed production values are something to appreciate given enough time and The Hyacinth Garden has the feel of concrete blocks thrown into flower beds. You cant really go wrong with this release and traveling into the world of Path of Silence with their artifacts that come with each release is only apart of the whole macabre production.