Venus Star - Nigredo Expulsion (2013)

   Venus Star has another feature that used to be common at extreme Finnish bands on the side of those that have been mentioned previously: the intention to not fall into self-repeating. '90s metal bands always tried new perspectives or experimented with something new. This tradition also could be sensed at Venus Star, because each album is different.

   Since these changes came step by step, and "Nigredo Expulsion" is already the third Venus Star album, for first listening it might be not even quite evident that it's the same band or have been made by the same person. There are some analogies, like middle speed is still preferred, and the vocal style might sound familiar, but the album definitely became less extreme. Tempo and theme switches have been nearly gone, instead of raw and aggressive tone more atmospheric sound showed up, and the themes became less diverse too. It seems like if unified sound became the main priority, and instead of expressing extremity, balance had framing role. The black and doom influenced themes were possible to distinguish previously, but now they're like fused together. The heaviness of doom riffs is combined with blackened atmosphere, but black metal themes having shorter presence. This solution is unique and sounds interesting, but the same time in this hybrid form the range of possibilities also decreased. More unified sound doesn't let as much room for rawness and extremities than before. Simplicity is still an important factor, but this perspective has also some restricting influence.