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Black Lava’s second album starts out very similar to their debut, a long fade from silence into raw, old school Swedish-style death metal, except on Soul Furnace the tension was spread across two tracks, the drawn out intro and then into Aurora. Here it unfolds across a single cut, Colour of Death, and the quartet’s second album is underway in very much the same vein as their previous one. Indeed, it’s almost too much in the same vein.
Consistency is an admirable trait for a band and plenty of acts have developed a sound and style they hardly tinker with throughout their careers, but rarely is this presented as starkly as here. While the songs are longer overall, in terms of almost everything else, The Savage Winds to Wisdom is practically identical to Soul Furnace: from the bone-dry, clean production and mid-paced chug to the themes and dynamic range, both albums are virtually interchangeable.
If this is a deliberate aesthetic, then Black Lava might reconsider, because the longer this goes on, the more the songs blend into one another. The band’s relentless plod and Rob Watkins’ scathing howl is too one-note to make most of the songs memorable; Unsheathing Nightmares is one that is, with the black metal side coming to the fore through a cloying, menacing atmosphere created by a sinister vocal turn and a keen sense of dynamics absent from a lot of the albm. The title track raises the stakes too, as it builds to a portentous crescendo of sonic violence, but the album is over by then – it’s a bit too little, too late.
Given the credentials of Black Lava’s members – Ne Obliviscaris, Blackhelm, Hadal Maw, A Million Dead Birds Laughing – there is every right to expect The Savage Winds to Wisdom to be sensational. Instead, it’s lifeless and lacking energy, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that the songs that do stand out – the opener and Ironclad Sarcophagus alongside the two previously mentioned – really only do so because the rest of the album is, unfortunately, so underwhelming.
