I like a challenge, I always say that to our editor, and this album intrigued me with its short description on the review list with adjectives such as twisted, bleak, misery etc, thinking I was about to embark on a journey laden with decaying corpses strewn around a gnarly remote forest with the cold howling wind piercing every sinew of the body. Well it certainly is a bleak album and it’s certainly fairly miserable but not done in the way I would expect within metal and this is by no means a metal album at all. A side project of all the members in Canaan but with the addition of Giannai Pedretti from Colloquio on vocals this is a drifting dark ambient album that requires total attention and no extraneous noise, so best to use head phones as the music is very subtle, quiet and extremely tranquil throughout. A quick check on the band reveals this is their third release and sees songs 21 to 30 being recorded, as I’m sure you can guess what the other song titles are called now on their previous releases.
Without too much focus on any one tune, this album listens like one whole album with no breaks, with only gentle pauses signifying any changes as such as the opening piece has a tranquil backing with keyboard effects and a subtle whispered gothic vocal style, as though trying to invade your waking consciousness due to the eerie quality this whole release possesses. There is a minimalistic approach to the songs but each is still drenched in ghostliness where harmonising melodies sit adrift the percussive backdrop which is serenely subtle throughout. Quite easily able to induce a virtual transfixing quality the songs dark ambience is tangible, with each tune unfolding layers of despair and bewildering melancholy. I really did like the way the vocals change from spoken passages to murmurs drifting on a winter wind. As you delve into this album you could fool yourself into thinking you’re walking during a moonlit night, where the depressive harmonies create an otherworldly experience where nervousness infests your soul making you look back as your skin crawls and you shiver inwardly.
This is a purely relaxing album, nothing extreme about it and though my experience of acts like this is limited it did remind me of The Third And The Mortal and some of the roster on Swedish label Cold Meat Industry such as Arcana and Brighter Death Now. If you want to indulge in something totally bereft of metal or rock for that matter, and immerse yourself in an abstract trancelike soundscape then this is ideal, but requires solitary listening with no disturbances whatsoever and like the album title, this really is a taste of light and stone.
(7.5/10 Martin Harris)
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