It’s a bold choice, to say the least, to give your debut album a name that could so easily be read as “Shambolic Vibrations”, whether that misreading be by accident or design. Other brave choices include the blurb in the press pack, which is remarkably wordy for a statement that actually says so very little about Lunar Chamber and their first foray into the mortal realm, as expressed in their “debut manifestation” (seriously). Themes include Buddhism, “the East”, esotericism and enlightenment, which probably gives you a mental image of something meandering, gentle and proggy, with lyrics about becoming one with the universe and suchlike, much like the one I set out with.
No. Absolutely not. And not only is it not the Buddha’s Bedroom (Kronos Quartet) bedfellow I was expecting, I’m hard pushed to call this any of the words used to describe it in the press pack. Lyrically esoteric it might be, but the vocals are mostly unintelligible (Cookie Monster growling does tend to be, after all), and I don’t have a copy of the lyrics to be able to make that call. As for musically esoteric, there are brief passages that sound suitably New Age, but the bulk of this album is tech-death, with no small amount of grindcore influence. I mean yes, the interludes are pretty enough, but there’s nothing obvious to link them together, and they don’t really do or mean much in isolation.
Essentially, there are two very different albums here, fighting like the two wolves that are allegedly inside all of us (not to mention on dodgy faux-Native American t-shirts from Spiral). There’s a sprawling proggy album trying desperately to be something transcendental and meaningful, and a fairly mid tech-death album trying to be grim and growly. The two halves almost come together on the last track, Crystalline Blessed Light Flows…From Violet Mountains into Lunar Chambers (any forthcoming mentions of this track will be referred to as Crystalline Blessed, because I’m not typing that out again). And when I say “almost”, it still sounds like two different tracks fighting to be heard, but the difference between the two is less stark and it’s the closest Shambhallic Vibrations comes to coherence. It’s not unlike being at a small indoor festival that hasn’t placed its stages correctly, and trying to enjoy something like the weirder end of Pink Floyd (albeit with more power metal guitar work) in one room, while studiously trying to ignore Cannibal Corpse going at it with gusto just round the corner.
The closest reference point I’ve got for the album as a whole, taking both parts of it into account, is an unfairly obscure EP I reviewed roughly 15 years ago, as a favour for an acquaintance. Said acquaintance’s little brother had teamed up with his best friend to create a grindcore/classical fusion EP which, like the studio project that spawned it, was called Fist in Fetus. It’s a gloriously loud, messy EP of festering, screeching rage, riddled with flute/violin/clarinet bits and interludes – as I said at the time, it’s the musical equivalent of throwing shit at the wall, and seeing what sticks. And despite that not overly flattering description, it worked for two main reasons: the musicians involved had the charm and skill to pull it off, and they didn’t try and claim that what they’d produced was anything other than “weird shit”, that they’d written and recorded purely because they could. There was no pretence that it all meant anything, just a disarming openness about the thought process of “hey, we could stick a clarinet in that and see what happens”. Also, fun fact for you: one half of Fist in Fetus now plays guitar in Stratovarius, of all the distinctly non-grindcore bands.
So to get back to Lunar Chamber, Shambhallic Vibrations isn’t a bad album in the truly awful sense. Some of what’s presented here is actually pretty passable, it just doesn’t really know what it’s trying to be, hence the bizarre feeling of listening to two very different albums at once. Which unfortunately makes the disconnect sound cooler than it is. The problem is that neither of the two competing sides are especially unique, and while the combination of the two is rarer, it’s entirely possible that there’s a good reason for that. The crossover being attempted here is very much in the realm of peculiar crossover/genre fusion for most people, and I can’t help but think it would land better if it were presented as such, without dressing it up as something profound and quasi-religious. It is possible to make combinations like this work (Fist in Fetus are only one example, there are many more out there), but doing so requires a level of charm, technical ability, and frankness about the inherent absurdity of what you’re doing that I can’t say I’ve found on this album.
(3/10 Ellie)
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