It takes a certain amount of self-assuredness, even pomposity, to assume that your music is good enough to be deemed a theme for the coming apocalypse. Truth be told, if the world were about to meet its timely demise, I’m not sure what I would want, or expect, to hear. Perhaps some destructive black metal, or maybe something a bit more mournful, which would fit P:407’s sound more accurately.
Trouble is, there are far better examples of this kind of music already in circulation that I would rather hear on the big speakers as the four horsemen ride through bringing with them war and pestilence. There are times throughout this half hour where I genuinely find myself enjoying the music, drawn in by the hypnotic simplicity of ‘The Face Of End’, as the doom-like ambience drags you deeper and deeper into the dark, subterranean pit.
I’m lured into ‘Prophecy’ by what starts out something like a twisted lullaby, that fades into a soporific melody that just about manages to soothe and console the soul when I am snapped out of such a state by the metallic scraping that manifests in a NIN ‘Reptile’ kinda way; scratching and scything above the cataclysmic bottom end as top layers of distortion gradually trail off into a drum & bass rhythm that could well be the soundtrack to the post-apocalyptic party.
Sandwiched between these two instrumental tracks, is the only one that contains any vocals, ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’. Kicking off with an Anathamaic kind of melancholy, it soon breaks away from the existing flow and sadly seems to weaken the whole record in the process. What we are left with is a potentially good piece of music that lets itself down with its sheer disjointedness. Sounding like a bad cover of an 80’s goth track, it is the contrived vocals that really take some getting used to, but in the end the poor production doesn’t compliment them in the slightest.
This is far from a bad record, and if you enjoy ambient, melancholic doom then I urge you to give this a listen. Those looking for easily accessible tunes won’t find what they are after here, and considering this is largely instrumental it won’t be for everyone.
www.myspace.com/p407
