Returning from the depths of the seas comes Uzlaga and their third full length offering Depthdweller. This is a continuation of what they’ve done in the past with The Sunken Seer and The Might of Waves. Its a straight forward black metal album with some melodic leanings and some surprise twists that gives Uzlaga their unique sound, approach, and imagery. Drawing upon the darkest depths of our very oceans, and the many lives taken by it.
With an eerie synthetic intro, we lower our selves into the ocean, deeper and colder we descend deeper with this two minute track. The following track Submersion greets us yet again with an eerie guitar intro, when finally getting into the meat of things with a hard hitting mid-paced black metal track with punkish aspirations. The atmosphere certainly is thick with this album and takes a while to really get into it, but you can really find yourself getting immersed into this if you’re more inclined to do so. The guitars are pretty strong, with melodic riffs and some hard hitting drums, its an all around fun listen.
Each track is different jumping from a crust punk sort of sound to more traditional black metal, to a more black rock n’ roll sound that makes the album feel all over the place sonically, and sometimes there are some misses. Much of the more ‘punk’ sounding tracks tend to blend together, like towards the middle of the album, feels like a rushed after thought, and gets all rather one note to me. Personally, I wasn’t really captured until the second half of the album. Tracks like Alone I feel is where Uzlaga really shines. They’re really good at capturing a dreary and melancholic atmosphere on the guitars and the vocals have a pained feeling all through out the track. And on the more atmospheric moments on Light of the Moon, with a blackgaze approach on this track, I think it really makes the band shine.
The album ends on a more atmospheric note and towards the end with the last few tracks, it leaves a satisfying end for the whole release. Its entertaining as a whole and definitely is a fun listen, but it didn’t capture me as much as their first album did, and felt a little redundant at times. I feel like the band should lean more into the more atmospheric and ‘blackgaze’ approach. I’d definitely see someone who’s just getting into the genre to give this album a listen, or someone who likes the idea of black metal.