Band:	Bríi
Album:	Entre Tudo Que É Visto E Oculto
Style:	Ambient black metal
Release date:	February 2020

01. Caos E Ordem Tiveram Um Neto
02. Sabedoria De Tudo Que É Oculto
03. Valias Desmanchando Em Queda
04. A Hora Da Morte

A fellow MS user recommended this album to me maybe about a month ago saying it was something that would be right up my alley. Sure enough, it absolutely was and is. But that doesn't make it any easier to describe it.

Bríi is a rather difficult band to affix with a label, but I'll do my best. A one man Brazilian project from an individual going by "Serafim," the music on the debut Entre Tudo Que É Visto E Oculto could probably be dubbed generally as black metal, but that would still be slightly misleading. Indeed, a good bulk of this mysterious, multifaceted debut sits more in a dreamlike, almost folky ambient territory, and seems pretty comfortable exploring said territory for extended periods before any more extreme aspects of the composition come into play. The black metal elements have a tendency to enter the picture very gradually and begin slowly escalating from there in their intensity (see the opening track especially), often beginning as quiet riffs in the background while the ambient approach is still in the forefront. Sooner or later it all starts to build, however, to the point that by the end of a track one may be experiencing much more aggressive riffing and even perhaps some blasts as well while things were relatively more restrained and minimalistic perhaps not even 5 minutes prior.

After hearing a pretty impressive album from Deafkids last year (who, curiously, are also Brazilian), I began to develop a desire for more metal that merged both psychedelic and electronic influences, something that seems to be a rather untapped area of genre fusion with a lot of potential. Bríi somehow manages to scratch that itch with Entre Tudo, for in addition to the black metal and ambient elements there's also a significant undershade of? swirly, trippy electronica, of all things. This is a somewhat more subtle aspect of the music, and it rarely finds itself "taking over" the composition, but it's still an integral piece of the whole that helps make Bríi's music that much more captivating. The typical method seems to be to have these electronic elements come in as something of an embellishment upon the black metal, pushing the music more to its proverbial climax. At other moments, once the music has retreated a bit from its climax points, Bríi may descend further into the electronics as a sort of compositional resolution, closing track "A Hora Da Morte" being perhaps the best example.

There's a lot to unpack with Entre Tudo Que É Visto E Oculto, and it's definitely the kind of release that one probably won't entirely "get" after the first listen, but the music within always seems very tightly controlled, fantastically developed, and not in any way messy or overly complex. Enjoyable from a wide range of perspectives for its unique blend of various black metal, ambient, psychedelic, and electronic styles, this is a very unique and powerful debut from Bríi that has given me as much reason as I ever would have needed to keep an eye out of Serafim and his subsequent endeavors with the project in the future. Considering how great Entre Tudo already is for a debut, I can't wait to see what else happens with Bríi from here.