Animi Vultus - innerside... (2012)
In preparation for the upcoming album
from Animi Vultus, we're heading back to 2012 to check in on their latest album, innerside....
According to their notes on BandCamp, the band's songs are 100%
improvised, which makes the effective tone of their music just that
much more impressive. With one member (Saliatahn) handling all of
the instruments and arrangement, and the other (Malphas) handling
vocals and phrasing, they have an intriguing and distinct approach to
generating their music.
At the same time,
that unpredictability makes it very hard to pin them down. They have
a resonant epic doom sound to a lot of the material, with a chill to
the production and a commitment to atmosphere (with touches like
indistinct guttural noises, dry-sounding drums, and organ interludes)
drawn from the more theatrical segment of black metal, but they pull
in so many other influences that it seems inadequate to just call
them black(ened) doom metal. There's soundscapes, drone,
heavily-filtered folk, funeral doom, and more, all of it effectively
channeled in their unscripted studio sessions.
Most of the songs
top the 6-minute mark (the two that don't are the intro and the very
short “Meaningless Thing”), with the first post-intro track,
“...As The World Burns” taking the crown at ~10 minutes. The duo
makes excellent use of their time, developing some goosebump-inducing
atmospheres that sound ideal for listening to in winter with the
lights extinguished, and then breaking them into pieces with a
violent interruption (or, in the case of “Extension”, a dense
polyrhythmic build-up into either didgeridoo or a well-programmed
drone synth). The last track, “Self Awareness” drifts along on
gentle keyboards, circling a downward riff and stretching out into
ethereality, then silence.
There's
just not enough room to talk about all the impressive details to the
extent that they deserve, so, as a condensed version, take it this
way: If you want to hear musical darkness done in a variety of
styles, get yourself a copy of innerside...,
and stay tuned for their follow-up!
~
Gabriel
For
Fans Of; Gnaw Their
Tongues, White Darkness, Trees, Blackwolfgoat, Sunwølf
~
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