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| #FOR FANS OF: Sludge/Doom |
True to doom form, a massive lumbering lead guitar inhales the smoke of dying civilizations as growling and hacking vocals heave their ways across the desolation of “Dry Land”. Eremit becomes its own beast of burden in 'Carrier of Weight' and stumbles through the sludge of its reverb in search of relief from this treacherous strand. A very John Tardy feel comes with the vocals as the gravely unhinged scream of Florida's sickest sound finds its mirror in Moritz Fabian's voice, making the guitar billow clouds of grain to choke away such anguish. The pacing throughout over twenty-three minutes of “Dry Land” is reminiscent of the Altar of Betelgeuze's 2017 album, 'Among the Ruins', without the final step into the rays of an expanding sun to melt you away. Instead, you slowly starve to death as this agonizing song saps you of your nutrients and leaves you to finally be washed away by the incoming tide.
“Froth is Beckoning” brings that deluge with a massage of strings, fingers that become the legs of spiders, curling around you like the tireless onslaught of a lunar tide. This grimy and enchanting sound follows you for a few minutes before tumbling deeper into a chasm of inescapable darkness.
Epic longitude through three tracks is difficult to pull off. Flowing in a thought provoking manner from movement to movement without compromising the integrity of a song to keep a listener's focus makes it difficult to negotiate the distances a song will trek and what baggage it is willing to carry with it along the journey. Where “Dry Land” lost its luster, the energy of “Froth is Beckoning” absolutely brought that power back and, in the tips of its second riff, left me wondering where the soar of Pelican may come swooping by or, in its lowest register, when the intensity of a blast would squeeze its way in. Instead, none of that expected release would loosen Eremit's grip on a my neck, choking the throat and refusing to let go with the release for which I was so hoping. Like the torture of hanging by a hook waiting for your captor to return, the walls start to close in with a slight kick that speeds up the riff and drumming to make for a sloshing flow.
Then comes the monstrous final portion of the album, dragged out into a half-hour epic. Where “Dry Land” flowed like the dirty water of a receding flood into “Froth is Beckoning”, “Cocoon of Soul” takes a cleaner approach in its first minutes with an echoing atmosphere humming across the register. It is a satisfying payoff after nearly thirty-five minutes of very samey droning to hear a song that moves and varies while it drowns in the despair of doom. Like the chrysalis to which its title refers, this song wraps you tightly in its ever more claustral walls of guitar, slowly evolving and savoring every mutating muting of a previously plodding pace before crystallizing in the scream of a soul to escape its confines and be reigned in again over long progressions that last minutes at a time.
Though the imposing entirety of this package aims to daunt the listener with its ever-thundering power, there are few drum fills and deviations from form to bend the structure. Instead, these three tracks come more like a soundtrack to one's interment in a prison, an engrossing experience transfixing the listener with its subtleties throughout such minimal variation. 'Carrier of Weight' sews itself into your sinews, like a cancer that cannot be removed without splitting the brain and sacrificing who you are. The cage becomes the Stockholm syndrome love that you cannot live without, until the tiniest crack in the seams is spied. For a moment there is a way out. All of your self-denial, the indoctrination and convincing and the lies that lighten the load dissipate as you plunge towards the crack, blasting and screaming, wailing and tearing in time to the instruments in the hope that such raucous fury can quake these confines. The heart leaps, fingernails bend and break in the thrashing at the wall, and finally the force of this eruption, the deluge so long desired, breaks the thickness of these walls to set you free. Eremit has finally found catharsis. (Five_Nails)
“Froth is Beckoning” brings that deluge with a massage of strings, fingers that become the legs of spiders, curling around you like the tireless onslaught of a lunar tide. This grimy and enchanting sound follows you for a few minutes before tumbling deeper into a chasm of inescapable darkness.
Epic longitude through three tracks is difficult to pull off. Flowing in a thought provoking manner from movement to movement without compromising the integrity of a song to keep a listener's focus makes it difficult to negotiate the distances a song will trek and what baggage it is willing to carry with it along the journey. Where “Dry Land” lost its luster, the energy of “Froth is Beckoning” absolutely brought that power back and, in the tips of its second riff, left me wondering where the soar of Pelican may come swooping by or, in its lowest register, when the intensity of a blast would squeeze its way in. Instead, none of that expected release would loosen Eremit's grip on a my neck, choking the throat and refusing to let go with the release for which I was so hoping. Like the torture of hanging by a hook waiting for your captor to return, the walls start to close in with a slight kick that speeds up the riff and drumming to make for a sloshing flow.
Then comes the monstrous final portion of the album, dragged out into a half-hour epic. Where “Dry Land” flowed like the dirty water of a receding flood into “Froth is Beckoning”, “Cocoon of Soul” takes a cleaner approach in its first minutes with an echoing atmosphere humming across the register. It is a satisfying payoff after nearly thirty-five minutes of very samey droning to hear a song that moves and varies while it drowns in the despair of doom. Like the chrysalis to which its title refers, this song wraps you tightly in its ever more claustral walls of guitar, slowly evolving and savoring every mutating muting of a previously plodding pace before crystallizing in the scream of a soul to escape its confines and be reigned in again over long progressions that last minutes at a time.
Though the imposing entirety of this package aims to daunt the listener with its ever-thundering power, there are few drum fills and deviations from form to bend the structure. Instead, these three tracks come more like a soundtrack to one's interment in a prison, an engrossing experience transfixing the listener with its subtleties throughout such minimal variation. 'Carrier of Weight' sews itself into your sinews, like a cancer that cannot be removed without splitting the brain and sacrificing who you are. The cage becomes the Stockholm syndrome love that you cannot live without, until the tiniest crack in the seams is spied. For a moment there is a way out. All of your self-denial, the indoctrination and convincing and the lies that lighten the load dissipate as you plunge towards the crack, blasting and screaming, wailing and tearing in time to the instruments in the hope that such raucous fury can quake these confines. The heart leaps, fingernails bend and break in the thrashing at the wall, and finally the force of this eruption, the deluge so long desired, breaks the thickness of these walls to set you free. Eremit has finally found catharsis. (Five_Nails)
(Transcending Obscurity Records - 2019)
Score: 76
https://eremitdoom.bandcamp.com/album/carrier-of-weight-atmospheric-sludge-doom-metal
Score: 76
https://eremitdoom.bandcamp.com/album/carrier-of-weight-atmospheric-sludge-doom-metal