Subterranean terraces and various shades of black are wrung together on “O,” the latest sapling from Germany’s Kerbenok. The companionship of Stefan and Christopher Duis blends the wooden, acoustic sounds of nature and furious black metal, complete with blizzard guitars and blinding drums for more winter black metal. They prove again that Kerbenok is not a band to disappoint or manifest any cookie-cutter music. The artwork is as always, very striking with a stark, primal eye staring straight at you either in a crazed state of hunger or simply crazed.

“Heimstatt in Trümmern” is a feast for the ears. Twelve minutes made-up of twists and turns, with a very humble beginning of slow-paced black metal likened to Trelldom and Kampfar. It becomes increasingly dense as more notes fill the air while the screams turn more diligent. About four minutes in is where everything takes a sudden lashing of earnest melancholy, evolving in the blink of an eye into a catchy, climbing beat, that finally drops down to a somber mood. The bass gets tons of face time until the fire is lit once again, building up to an electronic cloud of radiance that closes with a folk vocalization. It’s a heated, schizophrenic wonder allright.

A gushing stream of black metal, “Die Schwere unserer Glieder” is a bold statement without being too straightforward in Kerbenok’s still non-agressive and avant-garde approach. Another twelve-minute odyssey, “Im Kreise ziehen wir unsere Runden” could almost be confused as being an Opeth song, until you get screams instead of growls and breaks into rampant drumming and icy fretting. If you listen close enough, you can probably find a bit of almost every metal genre peeking through somewhere in “O.” There is also the implementation of an eastern-vibed horn. The sandy mystique ends the track. “Frihet er våres” is more pagan black metal supremacy in the vein of Norway’s Kampfar. This is a catchier piece that seems to have bled out some of the experimentation, until subdividing the black/folk metal with celtic, female vocal-led ambient passages in a metal, then ambient, then metal, then more ambient again pattern. “Lys” is a short, electronic piece that throbs through a percussion session. It just goes to show that Kerbenok are definitely hard to classify and become increasingly unpredictable with every release.

All who prayed to pagan deities for more non-stereotypical black metal on “Der Erde Entwachsen,” will be a pleased to welcome “O” into their collections. Kerbenok manage to show just how connected and tight utter experimentation and strangeness can be. “O” perfectly displays the confused minds of man, the tug of oppression and freedom and the all-encompassing entity that is nature. It’s a worthy adversary to any folk/pagan inspired black metal band and is guaranteed to be a satisfying dousing of entrancing, melancholic, forest black metal that fleets in and out of even being “metal” at all. You're in for a journey that you won't regret.