Earth - Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II review

Year : 2012
Genre : Southern Retirement Home Shoegaze
Label : Southern Lord Records
Origin : United States
Rating : 1.0 / 10

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On an introductory note : I have no problem whatsoever with the fact that this album is a minimalist offering. My problem simply is that it's shit at that.

I was very glad and excited when I first discovered the doom drone formation "Earth", as their earlier output sounded like an intricately varied-, almost dangerously calm take on southern doom vibes, and the musical thought behind their earlier catalog was and STILL is luscious, evident, rampant. This personal discovery happened by the time that the band was soon to release their consecutive full length, the first installment of a future trilogy, called Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light. I have listened to that particular record for days with the intention of writing a review of it, trying to find out if the problem is with me or the album, as it contained spaced out southern music with a very demanding and tedious tendency to reiterate stone-simplistic riffs for minutes and minutes and minutes and miiiiinutes and miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinutes and oh my fucking God. I was vastly underwhelmed by the release, and decided it is better if I do not roundhouse kick it flat on its ass, and was hoping that the next addition to the trilogy - the enigmatically titled Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II - will show deviation from the ultra-minimalistic approach I personally found the first album to be. Boy, I was wrong. This next baby in the trilogy is packed with decaying cowboy corpse music with very. little. if. anything. going on in the department of actual musical development in it. Honestly, I'm baffled that this record took this much time to release, (create??) as I would say that a semi-shitty sedated blues band recreates this boring pseudo-ambient stimuli on every fucking day of the week, just buy them a barrel of beer to put you into a deep sleep. Read on to find out "more" about this - in my opinion - uncompromisingly uninspired, boring southern retirement home release.


The only way I can imagine digging this record by, is to be an even bigger snob than Yours, Truly, and I can envision a full blown space cowboy commenting on this article later on, informing nearby general consensus that the reviewer is a douché latex gimp with a billiard ball in his mouth and is fucked only by rabid power metal dwarfs, and he has no relevant knowledge at all about HOW you ACTUALLY are supposed to listen to this amazing sonic testament. Yeah, I hear you, cowboy. I suppose I need to ride on a weedrocket heavy enough so I need to hold it with both hands, and, when I'm stoned to a fucking gargoyle, THEN I will get the viiibeZZ o' the recoo'd aye? GTFO, I'm begging you. This sounds to me as supremely mediocre ambient bullshit cowboy music played by drunk ass zombie cowboys that seek to rob out the fabric of reality of time, and SOME segments - not more - of this album could be used in a tryout-Breaking Bad scene that does not appear in the final episode, I'll give it that. This is music played for the enjoyment of its players. And NO, nothing is THAT deep or THAT vibrant on it, no. Everything is randomly spaced/stoned out stillness, and the band satisfies with the limited beauty of the casual pattern that necessarily emerges when even minimally enthusiastic musicians -shame on them - care to pay attention to each other. Other than that, bring the flame and please educate me on what I am missing here. Right now, I hereby declare this release a joke and a bitter of it until further notice, and I of course remain ready to re-evaluate my position if you point out the anatomical distortions of my impressions of this release. A very shameful album, in my opinion, with no capacity other than to rob you out of 46 minutes you could spend better, including amidst these activities to play this ACME- bullshit ambient blues music for yourself with a tormented guitar and a drunk ass monkey, or hell, wanking off to a shitty porn drawing. Good l(i)(u)ck with that.

Rating : 1.0 / 10

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Wolves in the Throne Room - Celestial Lineage review

Year : 2011
Genre : Black Metal
Label : Southern Lord
Origin : United States
Rating : 5.0 / 10

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Wolves in the Throne Room still wants to make you lie on the floor and cry as it channels relentless audio data that does not give you all that much other chance than to submit to its openly cleared agenda, anyway. Celestial Lineage shares a variety of pivotal elements that all make it a passable-, but, in my opinion, epically far from great or particularly efficient spin for its own ambitions. Not surprisingly, the record comes to you in pitch black, waves a scythe and it is not loving you at all, and it is very hard to not notice how the entire build swims in foams and successive foams of relentlessly abused reverb effects, stacked on each other like it is the last day of their painfully misunderstood prime. In short : what the album lacks in content, seeks to emphasize by repetitious effect-wizardry, at least, it sounds to me like that. Subtract the bigass reverb effect from the opening track, and you end up with a very average black metal build, and I do not even know what it wants from me. But I do know I don't want a thing from it.

Noise Shaft despises cynicism openly, and, on occasion, it commits it to strengthen this valiant directive. The album features around five minutes of passable-, but not all that memorable or inventive atmospheric elements, featuring Mr. Blowing Wind, Mr. Cracking Fire, and Mr. Bored-ass Male Chorus. The main operational field of the release is the ASAP-rendition of traditional soulslicer-grade black metal, but, without the harmonic magic of Burzum or Septic Mind on board. Check out the ambient section of this cosmic soulcrusher track from Russian Doomers Septic Mind if you want. On Celestial Lineage, more emphasis is placed on the mere act of the sloppy slicing than on the exact shape of the scythe that gets complimented for the moment. In other words : while melodies and different frequency vibrations are presented along a cumbersome sense of sweaty variation, the content, not surprisingly, never chooses to stray away from the artistic behavior of directing the fullest attention to the tinkering of decay. Wolves in the Throne Room's Celestial Lineage seeks decay so much, it decays while doing that. Read on to find out if this decay process signifies any danger at all for the attention span resonated by the Oh!, so curious mind.


Of course not, this is a pretty risk-free effort. Saved for its short, ambient atmospheric interludes, Wolves of the Throne Room's latest sounds like deeply traditional black metal that does not seem to seek to reinvent, to add to any sacred/blasphemous elementary rule of the coarsest form of the genre. The compositions are relying on extremely wet keyboards and possessed guitars with keen desire to make love with the tremolo, both elements supporting the spouting type vocals you have heard many many times before. Yet, I must say I do not find the spouting on this record as - uhm - "natural" or authentic like on a Burzum record, for example.

An even bigger concern to raise and remain serious about, is the mere quality of the compositional work on this release : there is nothing wrong with the builds as sonic constructs, and there is nothing "with them/ in them" beyond the fact of nothing being wrong with them, either. The tracks are lengthy, show not all that much muscle worth eyeballing or touching multiple times, and each of them share this relative misconception of soaking every bit of sound into effect-madness for the sake of making it wet and highly intimidating. The intent crushes its subject now, though.

The spouting, and the eerie, occasional female chorus which is a secondary extra attraction of the LP, both wear out quicker than the average charm you end up from the touch of a rampaging female lich, and frankly, the sonic mood-register the album cares to move its monumental ass around to discover, is pretty limited when my snob mode is invited to spout out its own impression. The LP has some shamelessly masturbatory moments in my opinion, track number 5 comes to mind as an immediate example for this. Track number five is not as great as it pretends to be. The only thing I found interesting on this release, is the closing sequence of the last contribution, where a wall of sound structure of soulslicer guitars and synths that are seeking to eradicate all will to live, are increasing in volume, producing the only period of this album I could give a moment of honest interest for. All other things on it sound "uhuh" to me.

Rating : 5.0 / 10

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