Art school black metallers, Bosse-de-Nage, last released an album in 2018 when the blackgaze movement reached the pinnacle of its importance. Now, it’s no longer the target of love and hate and has settled into a respectable form of music with an admirable thirst for experimentation. Those that were there at the beginning of the 2010s are still here. In this case, the San Francisco quartet do not identify with anything other than a loose affinity with black metal at the beginning of their career. For album number six, they pin their hopes on their own judgments and hope they were correct. Hidden Fires Burn Hottest is the work of patience, refinement, and reworking of song structures. More importantly, the band worked to no deadlines to produce this art. That comes through in their music.
Surprisingly, there’s no messing around in the intro to ‘Where to Now?’ as they rally straight into the sharp metallic pounding with an agitated beat that threatens to gallop. The use of pseudo-jazz chords in heavy distortion reveals the melody like a fog light in the distance. Bryan Manning’s shrieking vocals have a snarl to them that seldom illuminates black metal. The blast beats come with ghost notes. Clanging guitar intervals give way to blissful jazz shapes in clean mode at 02:43. You can feel your eyes closing in blissful calm as Manning talks about the beckoning of subterranean whispers. Of course, this is a false sense of serenity, and the quartet end it in a blaze of fury.
By contrast, ‘Mementos’ leads with the spoons as the main percussion as a hum of amp gain warns you in advance to expect a wild ride. This time Harry Cantwell dances on his toms in a ritual motion as the bass plectrum wears itself thin in the hands of Drew Bonel. The cut-throat moment arrives at 02:35 when they slam on the distortion pedal and all instruments get into top gear. Their Bandcamp page makes clear that too many contemporary metal artists are aggressive for the sake of it with no heart in what they do. These are brave words, but you can hear the truth in them when you follow the emotional tumult of the drums and the soaring anger of the words. This is their first album in eight years, and they want to make it a defining one.
Though they detest being pigeonholed, the loosest definition of this music would be post-black metal. Dreamy downstrokes and the buzzing noises of a fax machine give way to a sequence of ringing chord accents for the intro to ‘In the Name of the Moth’. It’s an unusual way to lay the ground for a solemn Joy Division contemplation led by bass and drums. Though they may take inspiration from post-punk and alternative rock, this group are comfortable taking their designs into longform compositions. There’s nothing you can predict here, and that’s a strong case for listening to it more than twice. Like Liturgy, the guitars have as much in common with Sonic Youth as they do with anything from Norway in the 1990s.
The dramatic rhythms of ‘No Such Place’ possess a martial glory to drag you away from the anxiety lurking behind the music. You might feel entangled in something that’s greater than you, an adrenaline that does not warn you of danger but rejoices in its courage. Military drum snares resurrect the second half of this song when the first dynamic peaks subside. Turbulence is never far away, but the band can help you ride it and even enjoy it if you trust in their power. A blink of the eye does not even materialise when ‘Underwater’ starts like ‘Everlong’ by Foo Fighters in the grip of a cannibalistic frenzy. Many of the blackgaze bands have tried to do this and failed, but Bosse-de-Nage could be one of the few exceptions. They don’t give you too much time to mull it over, moving onto the next target like civilised agents in the grip of a mania that cannot be reversed once it’s out in the open. And make no mistake: this LP bristles with black metal vehemence. Often, the latent melodic phrasings appear like owls in daylight as the snares thunder under the weight of violent drumsticks.
So, what should we make of the band’s self-declared love song, ‘Immortality Project’? The jarring pedal loops would make effective background music in an arthouse film about living with a buried trauma. Imagine Tangerine Dream shrouded in the sorrows of early Anathema. More metalheads would appreciate post-rock if it had this level of cinematic prowess.
Drums simmer and climb as the guitars hiss and ache under the throat of Bryan Manning’s vocal missiles in closing effort, ‘Leviathan’. Is it the heroic sound of a man enduring torture or a man confronting his mortality without fear? It’s one of many interpretations you can impose on this music to the delight of its creators.
Kirk Houghton
Verdict
Release Date: 06/03/2026
Record Label: The Flenser
Standout tracks: In the Name of the Moth; No Such Place; Frenzy
Suggested Further Listening: Liturgy – 93696 (2023), Agriculture – The Spiritual Sound (2025), Deafheaven – Lonely People with Power (2025)