Addaura: "and the lamps expired"

The rain and heroin that once flourished grunge in Seattle can also be used as a back drop for anguished black metal. This band is connected to the grunge history as Tad Doyle produced this album. This sets the band apart from most underground black metal as their is a lush ambiance to the atmosphere of their atmospheric black metal, because the sounds are thoughtfully produced rather than a couple of mics slapped in the rehearsal space. This doesn't polish the rawness from their sound as their is still a harsh scraping  fuzzed to the guitar mixed to the left. They are like vampire bats latching on to dynamics with a feral thirst . The riffs swarm onto one epic point in the song than hang there before flying back into the night. This is done to create a sound similar to earlier Wolves in the Throne Room, before their atmospheric elements began to take folk leanings.

The vocals are screamed with a gurgled torment over the frantic drumming that blasts most of the time, but knows when to drop into the more epic half time bursts. This is more of a two ep than full album. One of the tracks is just a sounds of the haunted house type interlude. They start the second song with a piano riff that reminds me of Sigur Rios. The song titles are little haikus with "the sun shines today also.on the oaks of that bird hill"closing out the album. This song the bands shows they have an even more original sound that the more explosive opener. They do run back to the safety of the blast beats four minutes in and then come back to some creepy post-rock. This method never comes across as contrived like some bands who employ similar elements. Perhaps this is because the songs stay focused rather than wandering off into the sprawl.

The use of keyboards is one of the band's strong suits as they know what spaces need to be filled. They never over do stringed synths to make it sound like an old Dimmu Borgir demo. The keys are always very organic and sit buried in the mix until there is a melody that needs to be allowed to breathe. I would like to hear what these would do on a full length. This is just a little taste and lets hope they won't wait another three years to dish out another nineteen minutes of this tasty black metal. It is worth the dollar they are asking for on Bandcamp. Since this is basically as single I didn't rate it, but if you have to have one I'll give it an 8.5. They only draw back is after hearing the second song, it made me think how they played in safe on the first, but really the main problem is I wanted more than just a little taste, so that says something, even if they would have probaly done this by giving me two more ten minute songs, which I really hate putting on the iPod, but it might have happened if they were as good as the second song.