Back in 2012 I was lucky enough to catch Aldebaran play a couple of
times on their European tour with Noothgrush, and also to finally witness the
impassioned fury of a Tragedy show. Both bands put out
incredible albums that year, in Embracing The Lightless Depths and Darker Days Ahead respectively.
Extrapolating the directions each album took, with Tragedy eschewing
D-beat entirely in favour of a lower, slower approach,
and Aldebaran taking their already abyssal sounds to even murkier
depths, it's actually not that hard to see how Nightfell came to exist.
Even
so, when master of mastering Brad Boatright first mentioned a project
brewing between Aldebaran's Tim Call and Tragedy's Todd Burdette, I
responded with some glib comment along the lines of "Funeral d-beat, eh?
I'm in!". When many months later The Living Ever Mourn was released, any preconceptions I may have had were utterly obliterated by these 8 tracks of terror.
Despite
the disparity between each member's other bands, this album is neither
simply slow crust punk or fast funeral doom, taking its musical cues
from neither doom the genre, nor Doom the band. What it does do is
channel the mournful qualities and aggressive atmosphere present in all
of Burdette and Call's previous output into something wholly unique,
allowing each of them to operate outside the constraints of their other
bands. The result is an album that is almost deliberately difficult to
classify.
Opening track 'The Last Disease' begins with
chiming guitars, before being joined by some downright bombastic
drumwork from Call. When they settle into step, the riff is immediately
recognisable as one of Burdette's; no-one else manages to infuse that
much sadness into their anger, and express it through six strings and
amplification. The double-kick rhythm and UGH-ed vocals set this apart
as being a far more metal proposition than his usual work, but the synth
interlude that leads into 'I Am Decay' doesn't allow things to settle
into one particular mould. The track features everything from frenetic
drums to funereal string bends, and since it never drops down to the
extended torture of doom tempos or gears up to deliver sharp jabs of
punk, the overall effect is more of an incessant pummeling.
'Empty Prayers' pushes the boundaries even further out, with Burdette's layered singing (yep, singing)
giving the track an elegiac choral atmosphere. The sparse acoustic
guitars that enter the fray from around the halfway point are even more
unexpected, though they are but a momentary respite from the
overwhelming hopelessness before a gigantic fuck-off pickslide and
cacophonous clatter bring everything crashing back in.
The
blackened buzzsaw tone of 'The Hollowing' is another total departure,
demonstrating that if nothing else there's certainly something here for
everyone, no matter what your preferred strain of metal. It never feels
like they're stretching themselves thin, each track has such an
individual identity, yet still feels part of a cohesive whole. Y'know,
the way an album should do?
The next interlude is the
seemingly obligatory 'move to Portland, start playing neo-folk' moment,
but it's thankfully soon brushed aside by the hulking riffage of 'Altars
To Wrath'. This is the only song on the album that I could actually
picture coming from the players involved, so effectively does it combine
their typical styles. The track becomes increasingly Frost-ian as it
goes on, perfectly demonstrating just how influential Tom G Warrior's
troupe were on every single fractured facet of metal.
Closing
with 'Funeral Dirge', a galloping, triumphant number that belies its
title, once again the cohesion of these eight seperate parts of a whole
is reinforced. When the track fades out with martial drums and howling
winds, I immediately want to play through the whole thing again, there
are so many stand-out moments just begging to be heard. The Living Ever Mourn is a rare beast in modern times; not merely a collection of songs, but a fully-realised album.
You can still get a copy of this slab of excellence from Parasitic Records.
Nightfell on Bandcamp | Facebook
This review originall appeared over at Echoes & Dust...
No comments:
Post a Comment