#final dose

For sure, there’s a grandiosity to “Floresta Hostil,” signaling a sense of drama that is more performative than anything on Final Dose’s last couple of records (and that’s saying something: check out representative band photos…). The song may not entail a matter of life or death, but it sure wants you to feel emotional stakes on that scale. It’s hard to tell if there’s any irony at play; black metal tends to take itself very seriously, and “Floresta Hostil” borders on the operatic. The remainder of the EP picks up on the sensibility, recalling the song structures of the Secret, if not that band’s inimitably fieriness. Like the Secret, Final Dose seems intent on fusing black metal’s most scabrous qualities with punk’s short sharp shock.

One could justifiably point out that Final Dose has always been working that formula. Perhaps it’s a matter of proportion — or of texture. Kvlty types like to describe trve black metal’s manifestation of iciness: “the songs are so cold.” The inevitable fealty to Scandinavia seems registered in the trope. But there’s a tensile sharpness to the playing and riffage on “Endless Woe”; check out “Golden Challice” and “Forsaken Armor” for especially frigid conditions. Maybe it's hypothermia that will take Final Dose out, rather than a Jim Jones-style refreshment. However the dosage is calculated, this reviewer digs the current formulation.