Opening notes and the ponderous nature and doom laden sounds with the faintest of orchestral feel to the melody and its clear I am in for some dark landscapes here.
I know little about this multi-national band beyond two members being in the much respected Pantheist (and Kostas Panagiotu guests on keyboards on the closing track) so I just let the preludes wash over me and ‘Refraction’ drag me down.
Even by funeral doom standards this is slow, slow music. Almost heading into Corrupted areas of sloth. But the plaintive notes of melody and the wash of keyboards add some strange strands of colour to this. The lyrics are dense, seemingly hinting at the border between prophetic revelation and sleep paralysis as the melody wraps an air of the cosmic about it. There is a genuine feeling of being trapped here, being pulled unwillingly through some revelation which very presence warps the mind. Yet some of the keyboards are so light, almost delicate despite the heavy riff they ride that there is also a feeling of awe as some vista opens up before you.
‘Petroglyph’ is darker; subterranean in feel, full of the eldritch and the forgotten rediscovered. First the dream and then the journey? Perhaps. There are strange moments of reflection here though, which sits oddly with the damned and doomed lyrics for me. But who knows how the mind responds to such things and they are soon dragged into deep time and stillness.
‘Passage’ is the pleading of lost souls and forgotten entities cursed in a dead world. Defeated, distraught and adrift it slowly treads its way in the silence and the dark but there seems to be no answer…
A prelude and coda, and three epic tracks of ten, eleven and nearly twenty minutes. Slow, unwavering, dark and swaying from cosmic to chthonic to a catacomb world as the journey progresses. And make no mistake this is a journey. The music moves and leads, compels and pushes the listener through its motions. For all its smothering riffs though there is a curious clarity to the melodic elements. The vocals are death cries, perfectly pitched and the drumming intense but ponderous.
It’s a good, solid album of funeral doom from deep time, a soundscape for those nights when you need to be alone. Recommended.
(7/10 Gizmo)
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