A gentle chime is rapidly replaced by an ominous drone that builds, to be joined by a shredded guitar that rumbles with a shuddering Sunn O))) like throb. It’s not so much doomy as positively apocalyptic. The heavy guitar drones splinter and scrape on from ‘Alloy Ceremony’ and segue through ‘Live at the Chrome Cathedral’, which have a combined running time of almost 20 minutes. It’s ample time in which to shatter both the earth and the listener’s cranium with the crushing sonic density.
Mika Vainio is back with another dark instrumental work, this time in collaboration with Joachim Nordwall. And once again, it’s bleak and minimalist, continuing the trajectory of Vaino’s past work with Pan Sonic, and is stark and intense – fitting for an album recorded at Einstürzende Neubauten’s Studio Schwedenstrasse in Berlin. Scrapes and scratches offer little comfort during the quieter claustrophobic chiller, ‘Midas in Reverse’.
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‘Praseodymium’ overlays sonorous guitar drones with chiming bells and glockenspiel to create a multi-layered, multi-tonal swell of sound reminiscent of the epic passages that dominate post-reformation Swans albums. It’s utterly immersive and the dense sound envelopes the listener completely.
Strains of feedback filter through the scrapes and the near-silence of ‘Promethium’ before In Sheltering Sanctus of Minerals’ brings a fluttering organ that quavers around an eternal sustain as it burrows its way underground, penetrating down, down, down.
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