In early 2008, if you knew of Mick Barr and Colin Marston, it was as musicians operating on the outer fringes of underground metal. At the time, Barr was best known as the hyperspeed shredder for Orthrelm, a duo that made a habit of exploring unheard-of extremes, from info-overload linear density to epic-scale minimalism, while Marston was the Warr guitar-wielding up-and-comer of instrumental avant-prog, most often heard in Behold… the Arctopus or Dysrhythmia, which he’d joined a couple years prior on bass. But by that summer, a record would emerge that would align these two maverick forces, redefine their respective paths and help to open up a new vista for American black metal.
If Barr and Marston’s prior work favored whiplash disorientation, the self-titled debut from their new collaborative venture Krallice immediately set a mood of trancelike wonder. Vast expanses of tremolo guitar wove together like splendid tapestries, colliding brilliantly with Barr’s desperately howls and the pummeling drums of Lev Weinstein—soon to become a full member, but here operating as a session drummer. (Befitting the ad hoc nature of the project at the time, the two guitarists divvied up bass duties, with Marston handling the bulk of the low-end.)
Five out of the album’s six tracks exceeded the nine-minute mark, each one feeling like a cosmic voyage, turbulent yet serene, with hints of otherworldly beauty glinting through the fury. All the obsessive micro-detail of the pair’s respective pasts was on display, but they’d found a way to blend their signature knottiness with something deeply evocative and even touching. Spinning a track like “Energy Chasms,” you might find yourself headbanging furiously while being moved to the brink of tears by the sheer magnificence of it all. This was unmistakably black metal, but it was black metal for stargazers rather than misanthropes.
At the time, the subgenre’s power center was shifting to America, with future classics like Wolves in the Throne Room’s Two Hunters and Nachtmystium’s Instinct: Decay—both later enshrined in Decibel’s Hall of Fame—signaling fresh developments and setting the stage for an explosion of interest, innovation and, yes, polarizing debate that would peak in the 2010s with Deafheaven’s likewise-Hall-inducted Sunbather. At the time, Krallice may have seemed like part of a cresting wave—and even, to some, like harbingers of the “hipster black metal” apocalypse—but, as you’ll read, Barr and Marston’s roots in the style couldn’t have been deeper, with key influences such as Darkthrone, Ulver and USBM pioneers Weakling swirling together with their innate love of the esoteric and complex.
Krallice would go on to become an underground institution, expanding to a quartet with the addition of bassist-vocalist Nick McMaster, who graced Krallice with a single growling vocal cameo on the track “Timehusk”; making a home base out of Marston’s Queens, NY, studio Menegroth, the Thousand Caves, which became an internationally sought-after destination for extreme metal vanguardists; and amassing a robust discography that pushed into ever more challenging and unclassifiable realms (case in point: the latest entry, 2024’s staggeringly inventive Inorganic Rites).
Stylistic orthodoxy was never going to be a priority for visionaries like these—“black metal or not,” reads a tagline on their Bandcamp page to this day—but instead they found a way to use an established aesthetic as a launchpad to their next galaxy-brained peak. You can’t tell the story of modern black metal without Krallice, and we’re thrilled to welcome this game-changing outlier to the Hall. —Hank Shteamer
Need more classic Krallice? To read the entire seven-page story, featuring interviews with the members who performed on Krallice, purchase the print issue from our store, or digitally via our app for iPhone/iPad or Android.
