Description

Double album with gatefold cover. Limited 450 copies

While looking deeper into crust, I happened to come across Oakland, California’s Embers. Their first full-length, Shadows, is an exercise in balance, so delicately put together that a fleck of dust could very easily send it crashing down into shameful failure. Its band members seem to be keenly aware of this as well, so they have built their album with enough care and cunning so that their work would remain elegantly in place in the midst of a cataclysm. Songs transition constantly between the gorgeous melodies and overwhelming heaviness of doom metal and the jugular-ripping tremolo and blasting of black metal, often shifting back and forth between both styles and venturing into the unanticipated marvels of the new and original yet so familiar and comfortable. There is a tangible focus to recreate both genres faithfully and very capably, while giving them space to interact with each other in a blend so graceful that it’s difficult to imagine how this could sound different than it does. All the while the general feel of the music is always intact and following a very natural flow in their song structure. In other words, the album features a surprising amount of variety while embracing a very well defined core sound. The heavy doom sections are pulverizing, the atmospheric sections are soothing and beautiful (borderline post-metal at times, think latest Isis or Minsk) and the black metal parts vary between the bombastic crush of Emperor-In the Nightside Eclipse (minus the flamboyance in keyboards) and early 90s d-beat black metal goodness. Songs never last a second more or a second less than they should, entirely avoiding a sin far too many bands commit, and that can ruin entire albums. This makes the album so streamlined that going through its 65 minutes of play time is astonishingly simple. If we add the many moods this album is suited for, Shadows becomes an experience so inviting, so easy to listen to that is almost guaranteed to get regular play. This speaks volumes about the band’s fantastic ear for fine songwriting. When a band depends so much on their songwriting, there is little use in discussing instruments as different entities, since technicality is clearly not what Embers is aiming for. No instrument particularly stands out, and this as a good thing. This album achieves the Herculean task of delivering the characteristic hatred of black metal and the beauty and dismal sorrow of doom metal in such a calculated fashion that the moods seem to overlap over each other creating an amalgam of atmospheres suited for as many states of mind as you may conceive. Where some albums are black or white (exclusively or simultaneously) this album wholeheartedly relishes the infinite hues of grey between the two. The experience is (for lack of a better word) magical and, provided the right conditions, this shape shifter can easily transform to sink its tendrils into your wounds, provide a soft, healing caress or persuade you into shotgun-blasting something out of sheer rage, as per your whim. Clear cut Album of the Year contender. The sound is absolutely unique, but comparisons could be drawn to such diverse bands as Ludicra, Gallhammer, Mar De Grises, and Emperor.

Track list:
1. Eucharist
2. Foresaken
3. Shadows
4. Plague
5. Malediction
6. Dreams
7. Resurrection
8. Awakening