Debut album time, but side project time too. This time by Darkside (Mgla) and The Fall (Mgla live, Owls Woods Graves) and guess what? I’m practically alone amongst my black metal aficionados by not being a Mgla fan, for a variety of reasons. So why did this appeal to me on the lists? Well Mgla as a collective are a seriously talented bunch and I respect that, and Owls Woods Graves are an idiosyncratic take on black metal too, so with this cover of a bleak urban landscape and a PR sheet that tossed in a whole bunch of subgenres it definitely seemed worth a shot.
Just from the title of the opener ‘Ozymandian’, I get a little shiver of anticipation. The riff is bleak and perfect, an eerie guitar melody running through. It just aches full of prime time (Viva Emptiness) Katatonia, genuinely no higher praise possible, and when the vocals come in the riff shifts slightly to a denser shade and the spirit of long passed prog death metal Opeth period, My Arms Your Hearse and ‘Demon Of The Fall’ in particular rises up. The melody here is black metal trilling, eerie and downbeat and smothering. It opens you up so easily to slide in the knife of hopelessness. Incredible opener, perfect scene setter.
‘Golem’ follows. It keeps that grey urban landscape in its hands. Slower, ponderous, in love with the void that grows within the soul… This is alienation of the spirit and the spiritual but deftly rooted in the real world. The drumming is mesmeric and beautiful here. The production evokes a hazy world of fog and yet still has time for bright clarity as single notes fall in the quiet section. ‘Waves Of Concrete’ is a short instrumental, almost oft and contemplative with a spoken word background that gnaws at me. ‘Deathdreamer’ is a harsh affair; barked vocals, sparse sound beyond the riffing but suddenly the drive of it delves into the darkest of goth/punk styles (think The Adverts meets Clan Of Xymox turned pitch black). It’s a wonderful hybrid, never losing the death, black metal feel but coloured with such wonder. If there is a fire at the hospice I stay silent and dream..
The title track opens with a grim but soft guitar dance, the vocals clean and the haunting effect betwixt Leonard Cohen and The Devil’s Trade, a journey that leaves a host of whispering voices at the back of your mind: There is no question if the ghosts exist, you are ghosts and so are we…
‘Autotomy’ has a riff that calls back to Katatonia in the depths of Discouraged Ones, that one step removed from the black metal roots of Brave Murder Day. Again the guitar snares you in a looping melody. Again an air of aggression lies behind it. ‘Gardermoen’ seems an insomnia and twilight world 3.00am melody, half hints of Ulver’s Perdition City in the emptiness it evokes. A real sense of dislocation. A real sense of loss.
‘Car Krukow’ is the coda to Hollow, a delicate piece of gentle guitar notes, whisps of keyboards and a distant brass sound as words are spoken by a woman threading through this. The translation is supplied and it’s half waking dream of perhaps prophecy, perhaps simply death fades as some grey sunlight seeps through the veil.
If you think Katatonia died after Viva Emptiness, miss the eloquence of early Opeth and find a companion soul in the roots of gothic neo folk then turn to this. This an eerie, downbeat and thoughtful album. It has a sense of aggression at times, other times an acceptance. It finds hollow spaces where ghosts and alienation sit, whispering to each other probably about you. Its suggestions are not always well meaning and at times a disturbingly quiet hint of violence surfaces. But there is such a bleak, intensely aware soul in the crepuscular world of Hollow that I will return time and time again.
I think my 3.00am world has a new soundtrack.
Stunning.
(9/10 Gizmo)
Leave a Reply