At this point, it is foolish to expect Blackbraid to pivot into the more ferocious and militant domain of Native American metal, inhabited by the likes of Pan-Amerikan Native Front and Blue Hummingbird on the Left.
The band’s sole member Jon Krieger is not reinventing the wheel with the project’s newly released third studio album Blackbraid III.
In fact, it seems he is leaning even harder into his particular variety of black metal, musically and conceptually. The third album is a continuation of what he has always done and intends to continue doing, by keeping his music tethered to nature and adjacent indigenous themes.
For what it is and seeks to do, the album is a step up from Blackbraid’s previous two studio albums, mainly as an extended third-parter. Everything is slightly refined and sounds better, especially Krieger’s vocals. This is evident from the very first spin through the album.
Opening with the fist-pumping Wardrums at Dawn on the Day of My Death, the album goes into songs that dances the fine line between sounding similar to Blackbraid’s previous outputs but also sounding fresh at the same time.
These tracks also show much better Krieger has become when it comes to writing melodic and acoustic parts, like God of Black Blood, where the oppressive heavy guitar rhythm is slowly pushed to the back when the flutes start coming in. Like a storm that tears through a rainforest, leaving a quiet calm afterwards, before the inevitable return of rain and thunder, Blackbraid III sees Krieger punctuating each searing song with ambient interludes that vary between acoustic solos and tremolo picking mixed with flutes and sounds from nature.
Krieger should just abandon the “rigidity” Blackbraid has written itself into and go hogwild for the next album, especially with the indigenous instruments, more than ever before.
For example, take the excellent Native American flute usage, which is sadly constrained to what, two out of 10 songs on the album? It does not make sense to hold back when he can easily take his brand of native black metal higher by just experimenting more, similar to what bands like Maquahuitl have done.
That said, Blackbraid’s almost overnight success after its 2022 debut album still seems justified. The project may not be pushing the subgenre’s envelope or even quench the thirst of extreme metal fans for “true black metal” music that sounds like it was recorded in a Norwegian cave using a toaster.
However, it cannot be denied that like Blackbraid I and Blackbraid II, Krieger’s third album will surely summon more ears towards the more extreme domain based purely on how much of a banger the album is.
Blackbraid III is streaming on music platforms.