Christ : "Tower"

When I was a kid and there was no Internet and these things called record stores, I would look for obscure music even then but worked under the premise that the music in side the packaging would sound  how the art work looked. This was not always the most accurate predictor. Here however is an example where judging a book by its cover would work. I did go into the second song thinking this band was called Christ Tower, instead of just Christ and I think I like Christ Tower better than just Christ. This post rock band out of Canada is not joking when they say they enjoy ambiance. The first few minutes feel like something Sigur Rios would do. These guys drone and experiment the right way. The guitar has dew drops of melody rolling off of it's hesitant playing.They drift into slow-core with an opiate grace that makes you comfortably numb. This is their debut album but only half way through the first song you can tell they are secure in their sound.

The second  song "Rope" comes out of the first as a classical movement might. It is darker ,starker and desolate like the winter landscape on the album cover. It would make a good sound track to a grim post-apocalyptic film that is set at night. It takes two and a half minutes for  it to begin to congeal into the meat of the song. It's heavier in feeling, but not metal. Not unlike Mogwai. It sounds like the minds who conceived this music were doing less drugs than Mogwai and suffering from depression. The guitar still carries the melody on this song its just a heavier burden of it to bear. The guitar sounds like a vocal in one part as it builds into a Pink Floyd like part.

There is more of an electronic buzz to the intro of "Planer". The drums roll in on the toms.  These guys know how to pull out some wonderful sounds from their instruments. It seems to be a trait that surpasses chops. But for this sort of thing you don't need to rip a shredding solo. This song holds the tension on it's gradual build. Vocals show up on this song and they are along the lines of older Pink Floyd, sing song talked. They don't arrive until the end of the song and the tension is really never released. They close out the album with the 11 minute "Ornement" which hovers around the same riff. It does have a nice mournful quality to it, but as a composition doesn't really hang with the other songs until the final three minutes. It will be weird for this band to go on tour with Cult of Luna who have seemed to have adopted a much more Mastodon like rock feel to their music. I think these guys are off to a good start and look forward to hearing how they expand their sound in the future. I'll go ahead and give this an 8.5 , round it up another half point to a 9 if you just love instrumental music and prefer it without vocals, as the sparse vocals that are on one song are never revisited.