When I first started listening to black metal it was often legitimately frightening. As a depressed high school kid discovering Mayhem and Darkthrone in the depths of a dark Midwest winter, it was a quite ideal milieu for experiencing the oppressive effects of this music to the fullest. Now, seasoned kvltist that I am, there’s so many more things I look for in atmospheric metal, and it’s no longer a common occurrence for a release to be truly scary. But Australian one-man-band Burier is here to quench that need with their debut self-released cassette, a 28 minute long desperate howl from the blackest and most evil of chasms. Burier’s unyielding walls of blasting anguish are swathed in an all-consuming, impenetrable haze of no-fi production, which distorts the artist’s ice-cold riffs, pained shrieks, and thudding drums to a perfect balance between entirely unintelligible noise and Nattens Madrigal-esque fuzz. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a black metal album that establishes and maintains an extreme atmosphere this well, and while I always hesitate toward comparison I can’t help but think of the buried wails of Paysage d’Hiver and even the immersive psychedelia of Murmuüre. Burier is another entry into the incredible arsenal of black metal artistry that 2019 has presented.