Norwegian musicians have always made a proud fact of treading their own path.
On Shades Of Black… Atena have adopted that genre-splicing trait into the world of more contemporary metal. There are, er, shades of everything from tech-death to nu metal present on its nine tracks, and, although Atena are happy to borrow from the formula, they never settle too comfortably in one place.
Child Support mixes a djent groove with booming deathcore subdrops, and the various intermissions, like the mind-stalking Violet, come complete with a futuristic industrial edge. While dripping in menace and threat, it still manages to hold the attention with enough riffs and vocal hooks. If there was a criticism, then it would be that a song like Viole(n)t doesn’t quite translate to being much more than the sum of its parts.
And quite where Atena sit in terms of the ‘scene’ in general is unclear, but certainly their experimental, magpie-like approach to all things heavy is worth keeping an eye on.
