Review# 90 Doom lords Sunn O))) team up with Japanese experimentalists Boris - awesome time! Altar is an album dedicated to sound, a concept that both bands are well known for playing with. Opening track Etna is a fantastic piece of Doom laden music that plays on droning sounds with overly distorted bass, this track could easily be over laid on a film with a high suspense angle. Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep) is one of the most amazingly sad songs I know, the pace and the atmosphere off set by the piano and the semi androgynous vocals really come together well and bring across a lot of emotion. Akuma No Kuma is a really sci-fi sounding doomy track, the vocals on this seem to be mostly vocal sounds that have been shot full of reverb and then run through a series of pitch bending exercises - this ultimately renders any song void an brings the vocal line down to mix nicely with the rest of the instruments and is probably one of my favourite tracks. Fried Eagle Mind is a weird trip of a song, and has strange airy/creepy/sighing vocals repeating throughout and building up to a climax full of static before plunging into the final track. The last track is Blood Swamp - it is the final 15min opus to end on. It is a slow build, this is where Sunn O)))'s love of taking one note and droning on it for a good few minutes really becomes apparent, while in the depths of the track the bass is droning and picking up volume and coming to the fore the guitars are picking out precise and perfectly chosen notes. Around 5min in you find things have morphed slightly and a soaring guitar has come into play, while it still tends to one or two notes it has taken the lead and is building up the intensity until everything has built up to the climax... Of stopping suddenly.
Having a look at the credits and there are a few instruments on this album that I don't know what the are like a "moog" - so if I have said that something is something but it is in fact a moog or a space guitar or something then I am sorry.
I would also like to track down the Japanese release with Sinking Belle (Black Sheep) and Sinking Belle (White Sheep).
Over all this album is brilliant, if you want something to shut out the rest of the world this will do it!
Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmdGcTQ6pkY
Akuma No Kuma: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu0HQ755dpw
No comments:
Post a Comment