The deep field black metal that defines the style of this album is a reference to vast cosmic scenes. This 58 minute, single track episode starts with old style furious black metal drumming, but this is the foil for a scene of huge expanse with echoing screams penetrating the voids. It’s as if the screamer is being sucked along by uncontrollable forces. It’s only after 10 minutes that the scene changes. The ambiance remains the same. Whilst I can appreciate its three dimensionality and the sense of this uncontrollable journey, it didn’t make for a very interesting listening experience. Yes, the Hubble Deep Field is a wondrous thing and is too vast to capture in a single snapshot, but this is music and it all becomes one dimensional as we are the aural witness to these screams through the furious cosmic skies. Of course it’s empty, and here and there it’s moody and mysterious. It is more atmospheric when it shows down and electronic cosmic waves evoke a kind of melancholy, but fundamentally it’s the same. What in post metal might be considered epic isn’t replicated here, as this just rises and falls in predictable fashion with no apparent point other than to expose us to vagaries of the cold and dark cosmos. I became immune to it. We were 30 minutes in and not for the first time we seemed to be hitting the end of the journey but like an eternal flame it relit itself. All the time it seems to be threatening to climax, and then there are quiet electro acoustic tones, willowy sounds and distortions, all of which add something to the sonic experience, but we had the gist of this world after five minutes and it doesn’t change very much. “EOS” is a kind of cosmic black metal “Tubular Bells” without the interest. Inevitably it comes back to the repetitive core and hollow black world of nothingness and echoes. The Clangers are out there somewhere. And so it remorselessly goes on and on and on ….
“EOS” is supposed to be dark and cold, and it is undoubtedly that. To a point it is haunting. As a piece of mind invading musical creativity I could not get anything out of it at all. It seems a lot of effort for not very much output. The quieter sections have moderate interest, and there’s a certain intensity but if I want to hear screaming in a corridor, I can do it myself rather than listen to this.
(3/10 Andrew Doherty)
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