Varmia ‘still have their idiosyncrasies and refuse to fall into the trap of an atonal black metal approach with no direction,’ said Scream Blast Repeat of their 2023 Prolog EP. We noted though that it was not as experimental as their 2021 LP, bal Lada. Now they return with album number five, and it feels like a paean to the black metal tape trading glory days. Lauks is an underwhelming affair from one of Poland’s most interesting metal bands.
The lack of low-end bass EQ is the defining feature of opener, ‘czarne drogi Xsiężyca’. In all honesty, the hiss of an old four-track recorder would achieve a better amp sound. Here, guttural vocals alternate with shrieking noises. A tremendous sputter of chugging guitar patterns and start-stop rhythms threaten to implode near the end, but they resolve this with a head-banging frenzy of drums. With little dynamic variation from the first blast beat and no charm beyond the first atonal chord, Varmia ensure you must work hard to enjoy track number one.
There’s no doubt this is hostile art, as it should be by identifying with the black metal genre. If anything, ‘zwykli zmarli’ might be too dissonant even for the casual black metal connoisseur who sometimes spins their old Mayhem records. Listen to the fizz of the guitar intervals as they sting your ears. You don’t need monstrous low tunings to achieve a heavy sound. The only problem is the possibility that the instruments might go out of tune at any moment. A warmer choral vocal tries to elevate its resonance in the mix, but the blistering tempo prevents it from achieving its presence. By contrast, the tom drums and doom metal chord shapes give ‘niekrwi’ a different flavour until the deliberate out-of-key guitar phrasings and weak blast beats displace them. What happened to the experimental impulse of this band?
It’s clear at this stage that Varmia intend lauks to be a dissonant black metal LP. Fun is the enemy; enjoyment of this art cheapens it (or that’s how Mayhem’s Euronymous saw it as the genre’s gatekeeper before his murder in 1993). A more militaristic approach to ‘stēisan azzaran waks’ means you can swing your head and thrash your arms about. Here, triplet riffing threatens to machine-gun you into submission along with the bombardment of blast beats. The solemn choral chants appear again, and this time Varmia’s band members make them the centrepiece of the action. If you want something to spike the adrenaline, look no further.
Maybe it’s not as impenetrable as you think when you reach ‘dzień, pół nocy’. Imagine the early Sodom records infused with a pomp denied to them by technology in 1985. Varmia are good at what they do, even if they limit themselves on this album to obliterating the listener. They show here that there’s more to epic music than a basic appreciation for the works of Ennio Morricone. Side B is where the Varmia of 2021’s bel Ladia comes to life. They’re less enthralled by the idea of flashing their artillery and more in tune with their pagan rituals. Observe how they use the keyboard presets to conjure the choirs of their pagan gods as the guitars clatter and clang in the background like resilient chinaware. It’s back to the aching upstrokes of clashing note groupings and blast beats in ‘korona’. Vocalist, Lasota, takes to the microphone with extra vehemence here and thrashes at his axe with uncharacteristic syncopation. One cannot deny this is menacing music that attacks the human instinct to gravitate towards melody.
The drone of a talharpa appears in between the gaps when they loosen the accelerator in closing track ‘…po widok za’. A plethora of singing voices contribute to the anguish at various points in this composition. You’re on the verge of adapting to it, but it ends before you can banish the goosebumps. It’s an apt description for the album: short (thirty-seven minutes), violent, commanding, impenetrable, and bereft of anything to enjoy, though you know you’ve just experienced something important.
Kirk Houghton
Verdict
Release Date: 27/03/2026
Record Label: M-Theory Audio
Standout tracks: stēisan azzaran waks; der tot Adalbert
Suggested Further Listening: Abhoria – Abhoria (2022), Tithe – Inverse Rapture (2023), Fraught – Transfixed on Dying Light (2023)