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CD Feature/ Nadja & Fear Falls Burning: "We have departed the circle blissfully"

  Tobias

It’s a bleak day with grey clouds hanging on an unpromising sky. Great. Just the right weather to make some tea, pull down the blinds and sink back into my armchair, listening to “We have departed blissfully”, an album which was sent to me a while back, but which has been continuously growing on me as the haze of summer is departing. The farther the sun, the deeper these sounds nestle into your heart and the deeper you go, the more you understand. Heavy stuff indeed.

Only a couple of months back, this release would have seemed unthinkable for all those who had discovered Fear Falls Burning with their epic double CD debut and missed out on seeing Dirk Serries perform live. Then came a tour with brutal demi-gods Cult of Luna and “The Amplifier Drone”, the rawest, dirtiest and loudest chunk of music he had ever done. After that, a collaboration with Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker of atmospheric metal outfit Nadja suddenly didn’t seem all that improbable anymore. In a sense, therefore, everything falls into place with this release. Especially so, since Baker has already been simultaneously preaching the gospel of Doom and Drone for years now, explaining time and time again to bewildered journalists that these two genres are merely contradictions in terms on paper. To everyone, who has ever lost himself in the outlands of distorted guitars, swooning and tumbling exctaticly towards inner peace as the music played itself into a frenzy, this will come as no surprise. But to all that haven’t, “We have departed...” will constitute a revelation of sorts. Baker and Buckareff lay down a thick wall of noise, buzzing chords, harsh bass thumps and a clanging and clanking drum set, while fibrillating layers of harmonics hover above the debris like the sun over a freshly tarred highway. It is never quite clear, who plays what or where Nadja end and Fear Falls Burning begin. But this tension and the blurryness of borders in turn creates a gravitational pull, which is hard to resist. Two untitled pieces make up the body of this Vinyl album, similar in nature yet very different in detail. On #2, the ominously growling overtones eat away at the shores of music like acid on a metalic surface, never fully dissolving the substance. The A-side, with its sluggish and majestic tempo, is more of a regular Doom excursion, until suddenly a new door is opened and the drones, released from their chains, float like lost souls inside the empty hallways of a haunted castle. Unless you’re familiar with these highly repetitive structures, it may turn out to be slightly akward getting into this, especially if you haven’t retained your teenage angst. These tracks are like rivers, which you’ll need to immerse yourself in fully to be able to float. As odd as it may seem: You will need to get into the groove.

If you do, what seemed so heavy suddenly displays a much more sensible and vulnerable side. You’ll disover strangely familiar sounds in the background and ride comfortably on this wave that is carrying you. And what seemed like a quip by WebZine Doom-Metal.com suddenly seems appropriate: This is indeed “very relaxing music for late at night”. Or just bizarre, but lucid auto-dreaming pieces for a bleak day with grey clouds hanging on an unpromising sky.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Fear Falls Burning
Homepage: Nadja
Homepage: Conspiracy Records