Braveyoung used to be known as Giant, and as such they carried a rawer, sludgier tune. Giant was a post-rock band, mind you, but of the heavy, dense variety. Braveyoung is still a post-rock band, but have traded in the atmospheric loudness for an emotional wash of somber movements. We Are Lonely Animals, the North Carolina band’s full-length debut, is even similarly removed from 2009′s two-song EP, Bloom, which still contained traces of Giant’s fuzzy muscle, and is laid out as a yearning whisper of dulcet emptiness. Like a study in solitary existence, We Are Lonely Animals employs every critical nuance — slow strings, delicate piano, chilling chord progressions — to create a cascade of elegant, beautiful, and haunting moments that will numb your soul, all of it accompanied by the desolate parlance of such titles as “And No Two Walked Together,” “Our Teeth Are Falling Out,” and “The Weight of Loss is Whole.” I’m reminded of Ulver or No-Man, or even Agalloch’s White EP in some instances, but those are my bearded roots showing. For the more discerning post-rock lover, Braveyoung will probably call to mind Mogwai or Explosions in the Sky, especially on the album’s longest and most devastating track, “The Light Narrows.” Either way, it’s some magnificent mood music.
A babbling brook; chirping birds; the slow, mournful lament of a cello. Thus, Agalloch’s latest wintry tour is revealed to us, drawn in running watercolours of black and grey. Marrow of the Spirit, just the band’s fourth full-length in 13 years and first since 2006′s Ashes Against the Grain, thrives on a cold and desolate atmosphere the band has come to make distinctly their own through a hybrid of progressive folk and black metal, meaning songs like “Into the Painted Grey,” “The Watcher’s Monolith,” and “Ghosts of the Midwinter Fires” sound like wolves carefully devouring frost-bitten corpses while the album’s grand opus, the 17-and-a-half minute “Black Lake Nidstång” and its closer “To Drown,” swirl around you in whispers of smoke from a pit of dying embers, the former eventually roaring back to life, the latter succumbing to its inevitable extinction. Marrow of the Spirit is incredibly rich and powerful in scope, weaving chilling intricacies with brutal ferocity for a devotedly earthly sound no doubt enhanced by its analog recording. Not just an impressive album by Agalloch standards, but an impressive album by any standards.
Listen to “The Watcher’s Monolith” from Marrow of the Spirit!
Ufomammut’s fifth album, Eve, is one chilling 45 minute possession separated into five movements, and its affection is wholly and shamelessly UNGODLY. When the music isn’t whispering to you in forked tongues and taunting you with an unnerving drone, it’s driving the heavy, black riff of DOOM right through your frayed soul. It’s a hellish soundscape of caverns and creatures in cloaks, punctuated by crimson spasms of cosmic catastrophe. What I’m getting at here is that this album is the aural equivalent of what would be going through your mind if you sliced open your inner thigh and watched the blood slowly drain out of your body until the darkness enveloped you, and should finally earn these evil Italians their own spot in the amp-worshiping cabal alongside monolithic motherfuckers like OM, Sunn O))), Earth, Boris, and the rest. Unkind stuff, man.
Braveyoung
Agalloch
Ufomammut