Band:	Botanist
Album:	IV: Mandragora
Style:	Experimental black metal
Release date:	February 2013

01. Arboreal Gallows (Mandragora I)
02. Nightshade (Mandragora II)
03. To Amass An Army (Mandragora III)
04. Nourishing The Fetus (Mandragora IV)
05. Mandrake Legion (Mandragora V)
06. Sophora Tetraptera
07. Rhyncholaelia Glauca

Botanist: self-proclaimed by its sole mind, Roberto "Otrebor" Martinelli, otherwise known as "The Botanist," as "eco-terrorist black metal." His first effort, I: The Suicide Tree/II: A Rose From The Dead appeared back in 2011 like a gargantuan banyan tree falling over onto the roof of a multimillion-dollar mansion. All of a sudden there appeared in the black metal scene a bizarre, hyper-environmentalist mixture of vocals, drums, and hammered dulcimer? notably quite a lot of that last one, actually. Otrebor would go on to refine the spontaneous and dulcimer-laden sound of his debut with last year's III: Doom In Bloom, which as the title suggests, had a lot more of a doom-ish vibe to it, with a more cohesive sense of composition as well. And now, in 2013, Otrebor is back, ready to assault your senses once more with his bizarre form of one man black metal and joyous songs of mutant plant creatures crawling into your eardrums.

So on what path does Otrebor take Botanist's tangled twigs and anti-human crusading this time around? Well, fans of more orthodox black metal sound rejoice, because IV: Mandragora, Botanist's third studio effort, is probably the closest the project has yet come to a more typical, straightforward black metal sound. Even more tightly knit than Doom In Bloom and far more so than the double album debut, Botanist's 2013 effort is comprised largely of the 5-part titular track, a pleasingly bizarre mix of very froglike, Inquisition-type vocals ("Arboreal Gallows"), a haunting bass line for the first time ("Nightshade"), and distorted dulcimer. Wait, what did he just say?!

That's right: with round four of Botanist's material, the dulcimer is actually distorted, and this is probably the one thing in particular that gives the album more of an actual black metal sound, or just more of a "metal" sound in general. It's a small alteration turned into a gigantic leap, and this is actually an incredibly intelligent musical technique, because with a project such as Botanist that really only makes use of drums, vocals, and the dulcimer, the slightest change in the formula of such minimal instrumentation can make a monumental difference, and such is the case with Mandragora. The distortion combined with the harsh vocal delivery creates quite the intense vibe at points, especially when blended with the faster drum patterns on tracks like "Sophora Tetraptera" and "Mandrake Legion."

In short, the fourth chapter of Botanist's pantheistic saga of praising plants while abhorring the human species is both a regression as well as an evolution. Mandragora can even be thought of as something of a fusion, if you'd like, between the first and second albums. The chaos of The Suicide Tree/A Rose From The Dead is there in the now-distorted dulcimer that sounds more evil than ever, and yet so is the more doomy, melancholic atmosphere of Doom In Bloom, especially on the beautiful ballady nature of "To Amass An Army" and towards the middle of closing track "Rhyncholaelia Glauca." If you haven't enjoyed Botanist's prior material, then there's a pretty low probability that you'll enjoy Mandragora, which sticks to the same core, off-the-wall sound even with its leap forward with the distorted dulcimer. But if you've enjoyed Botanist's previous work, and can't wait to see other seeds he has planted in his garden for this year, then you need to get on a listen to Mandragora immediately, preferably within the vicinity of some mandrakes, if readily available.