“Is this music?” I was asked. It’s music, but pinning it down is another thing. Take a combination of Blut aus Nord, Anaal Nathrakh, Axis of Perdition and early Cult of Luna and add the insane three dimensionality of Ephel Duath, and you’ve got a bit of it. At times, this is sheer sludge, the darker end of doom if there is a light end. “All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood” is strange and not unlike a very dark religious experience.
It’s an angelic female choir which provides the haunting beginning of this album. Evoking the theme of “Children of the Stones”, the airy tones are both mystical and discomforting. Just when you think they are never going to end, and insanity is creeping in after a mere six minutes, the angel voices are interrupted rudely by a mix of heavy doom, desperate screams and strident, industrial sounds. By comparison, the second track “A Body” is more “normal”, specialising in the creation of the penetrating and distorted sound of darkness and making Cult of Luna sound upbeat in the process. We’re warming up now.
“Empty Hearth” distinguishes itself by being the strangest track I’ve heard in a long time. Buddhist chanting, or is the commentary on the 3.30 from Ascot, runs like a deep vein through it, while being accompanied by crashing, distant screams and industrial feedback. It judders to a halt as if the record has stuck and starts again. It’s eerie, totally bizarre and oozing frightening imagination. My unwitting listening companion suggested that we might just be having hallucinations and imagining that we were listening to this.
Clang – clang, and it doesn’t get more exciting than this, deliberately so. This is the magnificently titled “Even Saints knew their Hour of Failure and Loss”. The eerie choir returns. This is as typical as it gets on this most atypical album. We return to traditional sludge on “Song of Sarin the Brave” but it’s not simple on the mind. There’s a sense that it’s not quite real. It rumbles on darkly with fuzzy, indistinct sounds. The industrial feedback is reminiscent of a train braking. The doomy “Ruiner” features the distant and despairing cries of people whose life clearly doesn’t come up to expectations. Thirteen and a half minutes of “Lathspell I Name You” brings the album to an end. This time the strains are sad as well as doomy. As the dark rhythm is established, the distant cries once again mingle with the whispering female choir. Then, as if an air lock is being opened, the wind rushes in and hammers come down on the anvil as we hear the slow, crashing sound of industrial doom. Haunting Eastern-style wailing goes with the tortured screams. A constant buzz runs through the dark and crushing doom. You couldn’t imagine anything more ponderous or slow than this.
This is mind-blowing stuff. “All the Waters Turn to Earth and Blood” is also unusual and different. It is a musical representation of a dark, sinister and macabre world in which humans are subjected to mental suffering. As a listener, I became immersed in the experience, which although unpleasant in its nature, was interesting and impressive.
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