Bölzer Make Hipster Metal at its Finest on “I Am III”

When you use the term “hipster metal,” it’s usually to refer to metal with a lot of post-rock and/or experimental music elements incorporated into it. But for me, hipster metal isn’t a sound, it’s a state of mind (MAAAAAN), where the chic aspects of metal’s hipster-appropriate underground movements are combined into a genre that isn’t quite metal proper. It also helps if the band is primarily loved by art kids who transcend metal rather than, you know, metalheads.

For me, such a band is Zurich’s Bölzer. Not quite black metal, or doom metal, or prog metal, Bölzer have a humorless sound all their own steeped in weird old mythologies and earnest, if not cool-looking imagery. More so, I don’t know anyone who likes Bölzer who is a diehard metalhead; the only people I know who really dig this band seem to be fashionable almost-metal kids who think the album stands out from metal at large due to the daring choices the band makes (are you a hesher who likes Bölzer and thinks I’m wrong? Comments get posted below).

Thing is, that’s not a bad thing, necessarily, as this new track “I Am III” from their upcoming album Hero makes clear. “I Am III” is an atmospheric merging of genre elements that creates the sonic equivalent of a historical epic (not Tolkien epic, but, like, Joseph Campbell epic). It was tons of unique character and will please fans of old and new school black metal alike. But it’s also super hipstered out, so if you really dug on that Grim Reaper track we posted a while back, it might not be the thing for you.

Check out “I Am III” below. Bölzer’s new album Hero will drop in the near future via Iron Bonehead. Details as they come, but keep up with the band on their Facebook page.

[via No Clean Singing]