Almost simultaneously digitally released (respectively in april and may), those pieces are followers of an already pretty furnished collection of previous recordings, indeed you can also find "Muuunlight" (Nov. 11), "Low Tide" (Dec. 2011) and "High Tide" (Oct.12) through the Bandcamp page...
Even if the overall clearly suffers of limited possibilities in terms of production - which doesn't serve at all such an individualistic style, "Uuutopia" contains 5 songs for a bit more than 40 minutes where Kalvin offers a very special mix of Drone and Post Rock, emotional, ambient and introspective ... "Spring Equuuinox" is significantly more short with its 4 songs and 25 minutes, this one seems slightly more bright and stirring too !
Give this band a listen, you won't need 10 minutes to know if it's your kind of stuff or not... but , even if it's not really my cup of tea, I feel there's songs here for a bit more than a pair of bearded crows !!!
After their "A Flame Never Rises On Its Own" EP last fall, Groningen based dutch band Ortega quickly returned with their longest output so far, clocking at over 18 minutes of psychedelic Sludge/Doom. "The Serpent Stirs" is a sonic voyage, a trial of battles with inner demons, which binds them in their crawling bloody mind...
This is great stuff for sure, haunting and dirge downtempos with tensed melodies in the 1st part of the song are sometimes reminding me the french band Crown....just wish them the same destiny, the potencial is here for that !!! but the song is long and has more to offer, definitely rich of various soundscapes and emotions, from psychedelic soaring guitars in its middle part to a crawling end in a laminating wave of heaviness.
Just one copy of the vynil release is still available, so you'd better hurry up; otherwise digital stuff will cost you 1 € or more...
https://www.facebook.com/ortegadoom
MY SILENT WAKE is not a newcomer at all in the UK scene; indeed this death/doom band has already released 4 albums since 2006 and "The Last Man" EP is some kind of single to present their freshly released new album "Silver Under Midnight"...
There's 4 songs, but the title one is the only one that is in fact included in this new full length, while we've got here unreleased version of "Et Lux Perpetua" and "Father" which were both from previous album, finally "OHM" is a kind of short mystical outro which appeared on "Preservation, Restoration, Reconstruction"...
"The last Man" shows a certain continuity in MSW recent evolution, towards something more melodic and refined, especially with almost fully-clean gothic like vocals and blazing melodic guitars; while the band has often been compared to Celtic Frost ("Into the Pandemonium" logically I would say), one can't not help thinking here about a more local reference like Paradise Lost !
Songs 2 and 3 come back to rawer textures, not just vocally wise... this is great and relentless, the atmosphere has something special with a particular attention given to mix ultimately aesthetic atmospheres and wicked heaviness !
All this makes me really curious to get into that new album... (gimme a bit more time Addam to make this time a proper review of it !) Check out MSW, a band that not only does perpetuate a solid legacy (which reminds that Death/Doom's main home remains England !) but who also manage to refresh and enrich it seriously...
Muuun is killer stuff!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the MSW review. Much appreciated.
ReplyDeletewhere can i find a cover of pentagram by muuun ¨muuun - last days here¨?
ReplyDelete