A bit of guesswork and internet hunting came into play here after receiving a somewhat mysteriously lacking information disc by a band called Atriarch. It would appear that this four tracker was not self titled as I first assumed but called ‘Forever The End’ a name that fits with the music well. Housed in a nice cardboard sleeve with illustration that I am sure is famous of a sorceress floating above a lake and gazing into the beheaded face of a gorgon this immediately peaked my interest. As it turned up just as I was leaving for a festival I had a few days and a lot of music before me until I could get at it. I should mention that this artwork appears different than illustrated elsewhere on the net.
The group are a quartet hailing from Portland USA and comprises of members from Graves At Sea, Trees, Final Conflict, and Get Hustle, a couple of which I have heard of. Graves At Sea at one time had a vocalist in Altar Of Plagues and that is probably the band that Atriarch reminded me of at first. The album starts slowly with ‘Plague’ tingeing things with a claustrophobic and smothering funereal cloak of stifling slow drumming, fuzzy guitar and bass and vocals low in the mix but still feral and on the verge of howling. Things get louder and gradually build, in no great rush to do so. As low sonic pulses bridge the silence we move to ‘Shadows’ with an almost Gothic guitar line adding a moribund and doom tinged harmony. Vocals seep through again, I can’t make out what is being sung but they are clean and drenched in misery. Cymbals crunch and the beast is unleashed as they fully howl and the music still slowly pounds around them.
This is not particularly easy stuff to categorise, to simply call it funeral doom would be a bit of a disservice and I have seen others mentioning the likes of Christian Death and Bauhaus around this, it’s no Negative Plane but sometimes the strident fluttering guitar lines are in that sort of void. Whatever way you look at it, this is good even if it is in an unsettling manner. As ‘Shadows’ really comes out the darkness it’s a really beastly sermon too. There are mountains of gloom and this at times is like staring into the very sea of darkness. As ‘Fracture’ slowly builds you find yourself mesmerised and almost dribbling as the weight behind it crushes inwards against your ribcage. At 14 minutes in length it’s an epic case of smothering before the lighter textures of ‘Downfall’ start massaging the heart back to life. Any gleaming hope is not going to stick around for long as you have probably expected and the vocals finally go for the throat and the drums smash everything into oblivion; a great way to finish things off.
This is a great disc which literally arrived out the ether and really piled up the atmosphere like a particularly horrific novel. If you are looking for a sleepless night and some nightmarish music made flesh, click the link below and enter the deep.
http://www.myspace.com/AtriarchMetal
Pete Woods
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