Blue Noise – World of Harm

World of Harm is the second album by Maya Chun’s solo blackened screamo project in that many years.

The album starts off pretty black metal-like with tremolo-picked riffs and hellish but way too quiet shrieks. These are interlaced with mathcore-sounding breakdowns that are interesting and add a bit of variety to the songs. Though most of the consequent songs follow a pretty similar structure with atmospheric black metal riffs, melancholy interludes, and influences from other genres such as noise, drone, dream pop, and many others. This is usually done pretty tastefully, making the songs varied.

Of course, there are a few songs that break away from this formula. And when they do, they really tear apart the whole atmospheric black metal thing. For example, “Before God” has a simple but evocative guitar work that sounds dope together with the pulsating bass and the electronics in the background. Towards the middle, the song starts getting more and more shoegazey until it reaches a blackgaze-sounding climax. Pretty awesome song and by far one of the highlights of the entire album.

The interludes and the quieter parts in songs like “Before God”, though, are possibly the weakest parts here. That’s both due to the fact that they sound a bit forced and weak musically but also because its where the drums sound the most artificial. The latter kind of hinders the music of Blue Noise from enveloping us more thoroughly and transporting us to the sonic world created by Maya Chun.