Already, there are plenty of styles out there in the vast spectrum of metal music that are designed to be immensely uncomfortable at times. It’s when things become experimental that we begin to dive into a truly demented and sometimes overwhelmingly weird side of metal that has much to offer with everything possible and nothing off the table so long as it’s within the bounds of a band’s imagination. To pull off such a vision, though, is a sight that incredibly few are able to execute to the fullest degree with many certainly having the ambition to fathom it but lack the tact to bring it to life. It was at any point in the creation of its debut album that Malconfort could have easily met such a fate, yet they persevered to create a record that is the very definition of experimental.

I hesitate to call a work like this black metal even if the key flavors of the sound find their way into the limelight even if it is but for a few fleeting moments, but the core values are all here. Malconfort could have taken their experimental sound in any direction with it seeming as though they opted to take their sound into every direction with these six testaments of madness. “Humanism” is a darkly psychedelic trip that breeds black metal and free-form jazz alongside the atmospheric and the immeasurably progressive to make for a beast of a record that is just as dangerously unpredictable as it is unfettered in its determination to see what it can truly be without the constraint of genre boundaries. By all accounts, this is an album that should not work. And yet, Malconfort manages to twist and shape “Humanism” into a confusing yet fixating work that demands you look deeper into the finer details of the album in an attempt to understand its very DNA. Deconstructing what it means to be black metal and showing us just how tantalizing it can be to embrace the depths of experimental madness, “Humanism” walks a path that surely few will embrace. Deeply complex and more than a little confounding right from the beginning, Malconfort has put forth an immensely hostile debut that demands the listener think about this thin veil of reality while simultaneously asking the listener to tune out to the meaninglessness of existence altogether.

Sonically contradictory but nonetheless fascinating to gaze upon, this is what it means to make experimental black metal without hindrance, fear, or doubt in any form. The very confines of reality matter not to the likes of Malconfort with their brand of music something that defies the very notion of it, and quickly does “Humanism” become something that draws you ever further into its swirling vortex of madness to a point that escape is a notion that should have been forgotten at the onset of venturing into the record. Sanity, light, and sense are eliminated instantly once you step into this work, and I shudder to think what else Malconfort is capable of with the prospect of more time to hone its clearly schizophrenic craft.

“Humanism” releases on July 5th via Transcending Obscurity Records!

LISTEN to advanced tracks from “Humanism” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Malconfort on Facebook here.