Whereas so much ultra-slow music that’s heavy relies on volume and crushing power chords. ‘Stealing Fire from Heaven’ is cut from a rather different sonic cloth. Building atmosphere and tension wish hypnotic picked notes and swatches of echo, its altogether more sinister and eerie – and all the more powerful.
However, when they do cut loose on the distortion, they unleash bowel-shuddering frequencies, downtuned doom of the most megalithic enormity. The nine and a half minute ‘Paranoiditude(Beyond The Grave)’ is devastating, but the mystical jazz that tinges the corners of the spacious ‘Surrealise’ is more curiously compelling, a wild sax blown away in a tidal wave of cavernous noise. They certainly don’t stint on the heavy.
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The dense atmospherics of ‘By the Light of a Dying Star (Neutron Start)’ takes elements of shoegaze, slows it to a crawl and turns the lights out, and if ‘Lost to Smoke’ starts out as a straight-ahead doom work, it soon erupts into space-rock mayhem. They’re still not done with the surprises: the glacial post-punk of closer ‘Retribution of Dreams’ is equal parts Joy Division and Godflesh. On other words, ‘Stealing Fire From Heaven’ sees 11Paranoias obliterate any confines of genre to create an album that’s truly in a league of its own.
11Paranoias Online
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