While only containing 3 songs, this album is three quarters of an hour long, and when you notice the second song is just shy of 5 minutes, you realise just how long the other 2 happen to be. While the album was composed between 2012 and 2013, it took Phil Tougas a few years to ensemble the right crew to bring it forth. As their own monikers for instruments are not worth breaking down, I shall list the line-up of the Canadian quintet as they have done:
Francois Bilodeau – Synthesized Threnodies, Spectral Hamonics, Dismal Atmospheric Vibrations
Antoine Daigneault – Five-stringed Cerulean Chasm Convulsions
Claude Leduc – Six-Stringed Glacial Blood-Steel Intonations
Phil Tougas – Six-Stringed Howling Black Winds, Subterranean Throat, Funereal Chants, Frozen Screams
Xavier Berthiaume – Seismic Pulse and The Ceaseless Pounding In The Eastern Horizon
‘Stygian’ tells the story of a nameless knight granted immortality through the gift of the God’s sword and eventually witnessing the death of the sun and the end of all life on Earth in three parts.
As the thunderstorm outside rolls in, and the day has suddenly become twilight in the matter of minutes, the opening piano of “Stygian I: From Tumultuous Heavens… (Descended Forth The Ceaseless Darkness)” has the added rumble of the actual thunder from the lightning striking in the near distance. I must admit that is the perfect music for these conditions. The slow droning vocals that could be the opening of a crypt door combine perfectly with extremely slowly building guitar over the laconically played piano and simple tempo of the drums. What feels like an approaching crescendo never arrives, as the swell painstakingly moves on, but never breaks. Even the lightning is moving closer at a higher pace, but somehow the subtle gentleness of the keeps you listening as the morose melody just keeps on adding layers as it goes on. Even the sound of running water over the keyboards is matched by the hard rain thudding against my window.
While I’m able to read the lyrics for “Stygian II: In Ageless Slumber (As I Dream In The Doleful Embrace Of The Howling Black Winds)”, I must admit that I’d be hard pressed to say I heard most or any of them for that matter. Sure, there’s some heavy breathing and the odd shuffling sound as the guitars drone their long, sustained notes over the vibrating keyboards and timpani. Now the rain in my headphones has become louder than the actual rain pelting the puddles outside.
The lightning is now less than a kilometre away, 3s from flash to rumble, and “Stygian III: Perennial Voyage (Across The Perpetual Planes Of Crying Frost and Steel-Eroding Blizzards)” is very very slowly being played on clean guitars before the distortion comes to bare and the croaked crooning sounds like the dead being forces to speak. All of a sudden there’s a guitar playing a melodic lead in the background as everything else fights to drown it out, so it fades out gently letting everything else quieten down again before the next movement begins. Now beautifully sung vocals have the choral effect of medieval monks, which are joined by another meandering lead and we haven’t yet reached the halfway point of the song. The storm appears to be abating, and while the rain continues to fall, the lightning is now moving away in time for the gently whispered vocals over near stationary guitar and keyboard notes to take precedence. The vocals become a haunting hum as they drone on over the keyboards which are building, as are the drums, for a final salvo as the song ends.
As this is my first foray into Extreme Funeral Doom, I can certainly say these guys are no Candlemass, but I wasn’t expecting the sheer destitution portrayed in the lengthy near silences between long frozen breaths. Certainly, more atmospheric than throat grabbingly intense. Something I shall definitely consider listening to if I can’t sleep at night.
(7/10 Marco Gaminara)
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