{"id":325995,"date":"2025-08-07T19:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T19:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/325995\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T19:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T19:39:12","slug":"blackbraid-blackbraid-iii-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/325995\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackbraid – Blackbraid III Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It takes a lot to quicken pulses at AMG Headquarters. Driven to exhaustion by merciless overlords, constant deadlines, and extended periods in the promo sump, the staff often look like\u2014and have the pulse rate variability of\u2014a hoard of unkempt zombies. But even we took notice when Blackbraid<\/strong> burst out of nowhere with some key singles from his first album, 2022\u2019s Blackbraid I. Here was angry, melodic, accessible black metal, infused with Native American spirit and vigor, that did not rely on tired tropes or clich\u00e9s. What could have been a gimmick instead lent the material majesty and an epic scope. When the debut materialized, it didn\u2019t quite live up to those magic singles, but it had a unique identity, energy, and spirit that turned a lot of heads. Blackbraid II followed in 2023, demonstrating that founder Sgah\u2019gahsow\u00e1h (Jon Krieger) was no one-trick pony. It was more consistent, more elaborate, and generally more interesting than its predecessor. Crucially, it expanded the band\u2019s scope, focusing on a more epic, natural sound in place of Blackbraid I\u2019s fury. It paid off. Blackbraid<\/strong>\u2019s preternatural rise was cemented by appearances in the New York Times and cover articles in Decibel. Suddenly, this was a band even normies were taking notice of. With added hype comes added pressure. Can Blackbraid III possibly live up to the enormous expectations placed upon it?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s deal with the elephant in the room. Metal has always hated posers. And with Blackbraid<\/strong>\u2019s prominence, accusations appeared that Sgah\u2019gahsow\u00e1h may have been overstating his Native American roots. While he undoubtedly has Indigenous ties, those seem to be weaker than initially presented by the artist. Depending on your perspective, his adoption of a Mohawk name, without clear tribal or reservation affiliation, is either an act of reconnecting with his history or disrespectful appropriation; his embracing of his Native identity is a sincere way of reckoning with his culture, or cynical LARPing. This stuff may not matter to you at all, or it may matter deeply. But it\u2019s worth being aware that Krieger\/Sgah\u2019gahsow\u00e1h\u2019s relationship with his identity and his past is, like his native land, complex and messy.<\/p>\n

\ufeffBlackbraid III by Blackbraid<\/a><\/p>\n

Which leads us to Blackbraid III. To my ears, this is Blackbraid<\/strong>\u2019s finest album yet. Like a long ride through a majestic landscape with your best friend, Blackbraid III manages the incredibly difficult task of being both wildly epic and deeply intimate at the same time. It marries the disparate elements of its predecessors into a compelling whole. The basic building blocks are still there: scorching black metal mingled with gentler interludes highlighting nature or Indigenous instruments. But Blackbraid III is no noodly atmoblack with more fuzz than riffs; this thing absolutely rips with memorable earworms. From the opening ferocity of \u201cWardrums at Dawn on the Day of My Death,\u201d there is a relentless energy and verve to the music, which is indelibly infused with its creator\u2019s vision, without resorting to cringy gimmickry. Other tracks, like \u201cThe Dying Death of a Sacred Stag,\u201d are far more intimate, with moments of real emotion and vulnerability folded into the blast beats and rasping yelps. The strong songwriting is evident throughout the album, but \u201cTears of the Dawn\u201d and \u201cAnd He Became the Burning Stars\u201d are Blackbraid III\u2019s core and the jewels in its crown. They are epic and melodic in a way that brings to mind the best of Moonsorrow <\/strong>or Agalloch<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Complaints are few, but Blackbraid III\u2019s interludes err on the longer side, which will irritate some. I found them a welcome break from the intensity of the heavier stuff, but there\u2019s no question that they are not as interesting as the main tracks. By my 10th listen, however, I found myself occasionally skipping through them. I also found the sludgy, dense \u201cGod of Black Blood\u201d to be weaker, both musically and tonally, than the epic songs that surround it. Finally, the album really should have ended with the giant, majestic, \u201cAnd He Became the Burning Stars.\u201d The closer, \u201cFleshbound,\u201d feels tacked on and closes things on a slightly anticlimactic note.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Blackbraid III makes it three in a row for Sgah\u2019gahsow\u00e1h. It is, frankly, everything a fan of either the band or this style of music could possibly want. Like the land that inspires it, it is infused with violence and beauty and complexity. But it\u2019s the ability to combine these disparate concepts with epic scope and intense vulnerability that sets it apart. Blackbraid <\/strong>continues to grow as an artist, and his albums reflect this growth. If you\u2019re able to look past the controversy of his identity, you\u2019ll see that one of metal\u2019s shining stars has, miraculously, again delivered one of the year\u2019s best.<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong> 4.0\/5.0
DR:<\/strong> 6 | Format Reviewed:<\/strong> 320 kbps mp3
Label: <\/strong>Independent Release
Websites: <\/strong>blackbraid.bandcamp.com<\/a> | blackbraid.us<\/a>
Releases Worldwide:<\/strong> August 8th, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It takes a lot to quicken pulses at AMG Headquarters. Driven to exhaustion by merciless overlords, constant deadlines,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[743,12294,101794,12295,113326,11463,117541,77,4256,117542,269,6080,6082,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-325995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-743","9":"tag-4-0","10":"tag-agalloch","11":"tag-american-metal","12":"tag-aug25","13":"tag-black-metal","14":"tag-blackbraid","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-independent-release","17":"tag-moonsorrow","18":"tag-music","19":"tag-review","20":"tag-reviews","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114989181711900636","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}