VHÖL: Deeper Than Sky

VHÖL are the ideal modern metal band—they fuse battle-tested forms of metal with impressive arrangements and a progressive fire that traditionalists and revivalists can't match. Their personel is bulletproof—John Cobbett and Sigrid Sheie hail from San Francisco's prog-power masters Hammers of Misfortune, Mike Scheidt is the vocalist and guitar player behind YOB, and Aesop Dekker is the black metal punker from Ludicra (where Cobbett also played) and Agalloch. All four involved have a rare, vital chemistry, and Deeper Than Sky keeps that fire alive while finding more ways to bend traditional metal formulas. This is the bar metal bands have less than two months to clear if they want to unseat them this year.

One of the strongest tracks on their underrated self-titled debut was "Arising", which added a healthy dose of thrash, Thin Lizzy, and Rob Halford to VHÖL's alien version of black metal. Sky continues in this direction, with Cobbett focusing on the thrashier end of his playing. On opener "The Desolate Damned", he bends a conventional galloping rhythm just enough to render it strange. "3 AM" begins with 30 seconds of straightforward thrash, before VHÖL add choral screams and off-kilter soloing: In VHÖL's world, nothing can ever be simple.   

Scheidt is primarily known as a guitarist due to the popularity of YOB, but he continues to stick mostly to vocals here, and it suits the project. He sounds more liberated in VHÖL—there's life to his "OOGHS!," his homages to Tom G. Warrior's signature grunts, and his death-thrash growls. The contrast between his rhythm and lead tones on the title track makes for a trippy thrash experience; VHÖL know how to disorient without obvious weed/space/psych/drugs signifiers. "Red Chaos" draws upon underrated Dallas thrashers Rigor Mortis, in particular their late guitarist Mike Scaccia, who also played in Ministry. Scaccia had an unrelenting rhythm hand that didn't sacrifice detail; Cobbett takes that same approach, creating soloing that isn't layered on so much as it protrudes through the rhythm.

Sky's real gem, though, is "Paino", a d-beat piano instrumental. The idea seems gimmicky in the hands of lesser players, but Sheie and Dekker lock in with each other. Like in his other bands, Dekker provides just enough muscle to elevate Sheie while still making her the center of the song. There are big-bottomed rhythms and soloing that climaxes like the volcano George Lynch posed on for Dokken's "Just Got Lucky" video. Only metal could make this high-minded absurdity work; it's the intersection of straight-faced practice and boundless joy, and it's as much of a metal song as anything run through miles of Marshalls. Leave it to VHÖL to find another dimension to the ever-bountiful combination of hardcore and metal, where the cerebral and the primal stomp heads next to one another.