Earthquakes, body horror, mass spontaneous evisceration and a mountain glowing a mesmerizing shade of blue in the distance frame this imaginative purgatorial quest from Banská Bystrica, Slovakia-based black metal band PORENUT who return for a fourth full-length album intent on enriching their already experimental craft with surrealist storytelling. Staring creation in the gape and musing over the suffering its gushing ichor exudes ‘Výstup k svätej Kunde‘ depicts an unlikely transcendence marked by the violence of setting and protagonist alike on this moody, complexly stated ride. A concept album as well as a true lifting of the veil unto a quasi-progressive tract here we find the band’s long running, ever-evolving ideation achieving its highest point of craft to date.

Formed back in 2008 by musician Pořenuťák (ex-Satanic Vomit) and soon conjoined with vocalist/lyricist Ňe (Ceremony of Silence) with the goal of exploring the irrational, meaningless nature of the universe via human existence Porenut have long offered their own brand of lawless dementia and folken wisdom via a black metal scalded vision. Whereas their debut LP (‘Mislife‘, 2013) was a rugged horror and an ambitious first step taken in its own right the long-milled sophomore record from the band (‘Postnihilera‘, 2020) was the one to catch my attention per its unreal take, as I’d described in brief review: “A raw and clangorous event in the true spirit of the sub-genre but also completely willing to take the rhythms of pagan black metal and shatter them into compelling, mind-expanding tirades.” Call them experimental (or even progressive per this new album) if you’d like these fellowes continue to deal in a distinct conception of black metal which marries a sort of progressive rock induced format, a pagan black inflected sound, and with some avant-garde/experimental temperament gluing their core forms together into cohesion.

If you’re not familiar with the Slovak language the title of this album translates to ‘The Ascent to the Holy Cunt‘ and this title merged with the double-take inducing album artwork from illustrator Marcel Hamza may not make any sense outright, at least not ’til you’ve read the short story (penned by Ňe) which the album’s theme revolves around. I won’t explain the cowboy hat, the bare ass, or the bleeding mountain ahead but rather suggest that the merger of creative writing, collective compositional fortitudes and a black metal habit which defines Porenut sets them apart even moreso on this album. We could tangentially compare the overall feat to similarly ambitious and highly literate records from bands like Void (U.K.) and more recently Grey Aura in terms of telling a well-fleshed story, crafting a character and illustrating a series of events through high-density ideas given to despairing mood-rich environs.

Survival, gory surrealism, and the decadence available to the last man living within a dead world “Chapter I” and especially the epic “Prologue” before it lend us unreal setting and a series of scenes which blur together as a central protagonist, a young man in a supermarket, finds his sentience alone in a sea of raptured minds and lots of disemboweled folks. In fact “Prologue” is a whole-ass world upon approach, or, at least a great deal to take in as a tuneful and eventful presage for the folken black binding which characterizes “Chapter I”. Psychedelic spurs and Furia-worthy slapped-through melodic bursts help to bring the bloody and unreal starting point to life with an arguably kinda whimsical snap of the wrist as the feasibly black metal action arrives. The fusion-slickened jive of “Chapter I” alongside a nicely defined rhythm section feels like Porenut‘ve found a headspace that is difficult for sub-genre music enjoyers to contain in mind where post-black, prog-black, etc. doesn’t necessarily sum the effect or the affectation of their performances. If you made it deeper into the second half of ‘Postnihilera‘ this won’t be completely alien but perhaps surprising for the level of polish applied beyond their last benchmark, reflecting some of the collective gains in fidelity and musicianship found on ‘Mislives‘ (2023), a recent re-imagining of the band’s first album.

Side A would prove taxing from the first listen, not necessarily per its imaginatively stated affect but the busied hands which shape it wherein the density of ideas packed into those first three songs made a mere fifteen minutes feel like a half hour. This, along with some of the side-barred rants contained herein speaks perhaps more to more Sigh than Master’s Hammer, not quite as zany as either comparison might suggest (at all) but traveling with an open mind and pulling from a headspace removed from typical black metal haunt. ‘Výstup k svätej Kunde‘ is just barely over a half-hour long yet it feels like the greater mount of it all is doubly long in motion as I’d initially needed a halftime break after just a few pieces.

Side B flows on but further extends the tongue revealed on the first half of the album, bringing some brief grinding n’ grunting death metallic aggression on “Chapter III” and noir skronking Virus-esque clangor to “Chapter IV” via dismal chord progressions as we reach for the peak of the story. The collapse of the latter is one of the more satisfying points of aggression and disarray found on ‘Výstup k svätej Kunde‘, an experience which flows with a certain surreal beauty for most of its adventure. Around ~2:51 minutes into that fourth chapter the tangled mass of all actors becomes nightmarish, reeling in disbelief as an alternate protagonist exits their death-scene by the hand of the original protagonist. Story wise this is where you’ll likely have to re-read the piece (via a booklet included with the album in both Slovak and English) and figure the perspective shift and how often it happens, my take being that the smiling zombified fellowe with the extra-wide grin and his crushed skull is the entity left to haunt the planet ’til it’d all dissolve away with the stars… not to spoil the curveball sent between “Chapter IV” and the “Epilogue” but it wasn’t all that clear on the first pass.

Have Porenut escaped the trappings of black metal or embodied the most classic reactivity of it? Sonically one might argue for prog-black tropes and modern applications (as I have) takes us too far away from that perspective as we do get something both within and beside the “bubble” of extreme metal permutations herein. The shape and the forms expressed within ‘Výstup k svätej Kunde‘ aren’t as important as the depiction in this case and that’d been what’d impressed me most here beyond the bands increasingly fine compositional ambitions, that scenes are set and reflect an array of emotions beyond despairing existential dread. Their work should best satisfy and potentially challenge folks with a mind for surrealism guided by an expressive hand rather than the usual seeming random generation beset by false emotive tropes. A high recommendation.

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