Cascadian black metal band Uada have risen up from the grave and created another stellar album that’s already a top contender for records of 2020 and perhaps my favorite black metal release of the year. I first got exposed to Uada during Cult Of A Dying Sun and it absolutely blew me away with their style reminding me a lot of Mgla, Dissection and many others in the melodic black metal spectrum. Now in 2020, this is the band’s third full-length titled Djinn and truth be told, it follows up as it should be from the last album but trying out different branches and incorporating many genres including ambient and even some old school sounding black metal which is quite something. Musically, Uada play a contemporary, modernized and structured style of melodic black metal similar to Mgla, Dissection, Sacramentum and Dark Fortress while having many lyrical themes from paganism, nature and darkened branches of black metal with little traces of melodic arrangements within the mixtures.
They’ve not only satisfied a genre so consisted, creative and progressive to incorporate naturalistic signature instrumentals but for these musicians to make black metal diverse and authentic there’s no denying they’ve taken American black metal to a whole new dynamic. From the soaring vocals, thunderous blast beats, audible guitar riffs and tightened bass tones, Uada’s musical compositions take massive explosive arrangements that penetrates the listener into a spiraling universe containing such astonishing passages and diabolical connections are built upon such wonderful discoveries. Their instrumentation work rely such great foundations for their continuous and inspiring lyrical interpretations bringing atmosphere, power and encouragement written all over this entirety of the album.
Their song selections are created not only are concentrated on ravenous thrashing in the scorching up-tempo sections as well as the explosive dynamics, but giving a sense of calculated progressions which therefore balances out expressive and impressive intelligence. Musically, lyrically, progressively and atmospherically speaking, Djinn is Uada’s matured, savageness and majestic albums they’ve produced to date. There’s no denying one of the most crafted, symbolic and established black metal albums to ever step foot in the realms of United States black metal and there’s a fine reason why you should hear this masterpiece of a creation.
Overall Score: 9.0/10
Review by Jake Butler
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