Much like the music they play Finnish funeral doomsters Skepticism don’t do things fast. Their last album Alloy was seven years ago and actual shows are hardly a regular occurrence. This perhaps means that combining the two is a bit of a shrewd move for them as they have taken the bold and somewhat hazardous step to go and record this new one in front of a live studio audience and yes if you were wondering that does mean some applause between tracks. It also means that they have been able to release the album on both visual and audio medium with a DVD backing up the actual music itself. I used the word ‘hazardous’ as it does not allow the group much scope to rectify any mistakes and correct things, they got one take only and had to endeavour to make things perfect. I am intrigued on how long it took them to practice everything before actually going and recording it all which they did on 24 January in 2015 in Turku, Finland.
The set includes six new tracks and a couple of old ones and runs a whopping 77 minutes which I am sure anyone that knows the band can appreciate is going to be a bit of an ‘ordeal’ in itself. I’m rather glad I got this in plenty of time prior to the release date so I could savour it when in the mood over several listens before putting pen to paper; you can’t just play stuff by this lot when you are not in the mood. Luckily it’s raining now and bleak outside so here goes.
The austere and reverential tones of opener ‘You’ flow out crafting atmosphere working well with the visual shot in black and as the suited gents ease themselves slowly into things. Colour is added to the screen as things build, the drumming is momentous slowly pounding out but I have to admit Matti’s vocals don’t at first sound on key and whether its nerves or lack of warming up, the first track really doesn’t illustrate just what the band are capable of and every time I listen to it I find myself grating my teeth and getting the same reaction as if someone has dragged their nails down a blackboard. Instrumentation glitters and glistens and sounds great in the acoustic moments between the vocals but things are really ‘all at sea’ on this one. Things flow into a ghostly melody without pause as ‘Momentary’ brings gloom and funereal vibes. I could be critical and say that some of the keyboard swirls sound a bit on the hammy side here but as it develops and the vocals join in sounding a bit more gravid and full bodied now it seems like the band are finally beginning to warm up. 20 minutes in the first pause and burst of polite applause comes in and kind of serves to wake up from reverie before much more stridently the funeral mass of ‘The Departure’ bustles in and if you close your eyes visions of a coffin making its final voyage down through a windswept, wet graveyard will surely accompany its passage. This is a band you could never describe as being on fire but now they really are hitting their stride and it’s easy to lose yourself in the morass of this grandiose sermon. Keyboards texture things in a way that would have Bach spinning in his grave and no doubt if you were in the audience at the time this would have sounded massive, translating it in this way though is always going to lose a bit of the impact but with weeping guitars and the slow toll of the drummer this is no doubt going to have die-hard fans of the band in their own personal raptures.
It’s no quick departure and off to the wake though as the track seamlessly flows into the 12 minute ‘March Incomplete.’ Twanging guitars and spoken parts send shivers down the spine and there are some massive growls as things build and swirl around. Watching the video the audience are transfixed and rooted to the spot before another pause lays this massive passage to rest. Last section of the new material starts with ‘The Road’ and sees a burst of guitar energy and rugged howls driving things as close to deathly territories as the band go. There is if anything a bit too much bite given to the guitars and they do drown out some of the more subtle tones here I found. It’s left to the under-titled ‘Closing Music’ to really see the band doing what they do best and building to a massive pitch with Matti beating a reindeer skin head drum and it reverberating with huge bombast with the organ sound surging to an epoch. This is pretty close to perfection and is a massive 10 minute climax in every sense of the word; very much the highlight of the album. Has it come a bit too late, was it an ordeal getting to it, that is no doubt the question that you will be asking yourself here and reflect on your overall impression of the album?
Giving us and the audience some older tracks in the form of Stormcrowfleet number ‘Pouring’ and ‘The March and The Stream’ from Lead And Aether makes this an all the more attractive package and you certainly get misery loads of material here to dwell on. I think it’s one of those albums that if you were there at the time would be truly remarkable but for the rest of us; well I find myself sitting on the fence a bit and found it quite a difficult album in most respects.
(7/10 Pete Woods)
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