Abigail Williams – Walk Beyond the Dark
Label: Blood Music
Release Date: Nov. 15, 2019
There should be little surprise that a band that derived its name from a young woman (some say as young as a child of 11 or 12) who was a participant in the earliest stages of the horrific Salem Witch trials in the last years of the 17th century in colonial America would release music that is dark and mysterious, full of images of horror, bleakness and despair.
A bit of an outlier on the death and black metal scene, the band’s seeming constant internal tumult, featuring more than two dozen band members in and out of the lineup since Abigail Williams’ formation in Phoenix, Arizona in 2004 (the band is now based in Olympia, Washington) may have limited their consistency of output and popular momentum.
After a short-term break-up in 2007, and a second one in 2012 in between studio albums, founder Ken ‘Sorceron’ Bergeron has taken the entirety of the group’s creative and musical side onto his own plate, and is essentially the only member of the band, dropping the band down to a trio for live purposes.
For the band’s newest album, the evocative Walk Beyond the Dark, the rhythm section featured touring band member Bryan O’Sullivan on bass, and Mike Heller on drums, with guitar chores handled by Andrew Markuszewski and Justin McKinney. Chris ‘Kakophonix’ Brown adds the haunting peal of a cello on many of the tracks, arguably adding both a deft note of Wagnerian emotive power, as well as infusing the tracks with a dour, but effective melancholy.
It is also an album that demonstrates Bergeron has become a very focused and driven songwriter, reclaimed the consistency in quality and hopefully regaining and building upon the momentum this album is already generating.
Walk Beyond the Dark and Bergeron offer up seven helpings of bleak realism, punctuated by moments of emotional revelation and incendiary power. And this is done both through the cord ripping screaming/guttural vocals, as well as the musical compositions – not something easy to do, convey emotion with both words and music.
While much of the album sees Bergeron using primarily a scream technique coupled with some gutturals on vocals, there are softer, more melodic moments where his true singing voice adds a note of humanity to some of the material’s gloomy inhumanity. As well, adding to the complexity of her performance, he adds a plaintiveness in the tone of his voice, as if the protagonist in the song is longing for salvation or a glint of hope that will most likely be in vain.
This is done to particularly gripping effect on the first single/video for I Will Depart, as well as the atmospheric Into the Sleep, and the truly epic last cut on the album, the cinematic and lush The Final Failure which also features one of the most melodically pleasing instrumental passages on the entire record.
Overall, each song on Walk Beyond the Dark is like a mini-soundtrack to a short film, as the imagery and dynamism of the music helps create stark, horrific and swirlingly potent images in your head – depending of course on how vivid your imagination is.
There are enough pulse-pounding rhythms, crunching chords and dark imagery to please the nihilistic palate of most death metal and dark metal fans, but there is surprisingly enough melody and musical virtuosity to appeal to mainstream metal fans as well.
For more information on the band, visit https://www.facebook.com/abigailwilliamsofficial.
- Review by Jim Barber
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