Dark creeping ambience and fear chords dominate this sinister-sounding instrumental release, with distant, distorted samples slowed to a drone on ‘This Dead and Fabled Waste’ instilling a shivering sense of dread.
From nowhere, in the final seconds of ‘Sych’ a mangled, strangled guitar breaks out before crunching to a halt just as rapidly as it appeared. In many ways, this is emblematic of the way ‘Delusion of Hope’ is such an affecting album. Sounds taper in and taper out, often hovering only on the peripheries of the listener’s consciousness, the frequencies melting together to create a shifting texture and mood.
From amidst the drones and rumbles of ‘Evocative Luninance’ briefly emerges something that sounds almost heraldic and uplifting, but it’s partially immersed in a wash of eeriness. it’s an awkward juxtaposition, the atmosphere pulling in opposing directions. How do you feel? Joyous? Scared? Both, and at the same time.
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‘Self Fulfilling Prophecy’ steps up the weight, a doom-drone measured with crashing cymbals, a ceremonial march in the midst of an apocalypse, setting the tone for side 2, which rumbles and grinds, undulates and concatenates layer upon layer of dark and unsettling sound. ‘Resinous Compound’ is heavy stuff, the density of the sound at times quite oppressive – and equally impressive.
If you’re on the market for an album of subtle intensity and spine-tingling, fear-inducing suffocation, look no further.
Ural Umbo Online
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