When I visited Hospital Productions (which now has a webshop, so you don’t have to trek to New York anymore to partake of its goods, though many items remain exclusive to the physical store), I asked proprietor Dominick Fernow for a recommendation. Without hesitation, he gave me Ashdautas’ Shadow Plays of Grief and Pain (Ixiol, 2005). He described, earnestly and with physical gestures (including probably some invisible oranges), how Ashdautas had the harshest, most anguished vocals he’d ever heard. These were strong words from someone whose livelihood is abrasive sounds.
Lightless HorizonAnd You Will Shed Tears of Scarlet
Sure enough, the vocals of this Long Beach band are extremely, extremely distressed. My initial reaction: laughter – but laughter’s mirror is madness, and in headphones, these vocals can be quite chilling. Yes, they’re over-the-top and sometimes resemble a terrible bout of constipation, but they’re memorable, nonetheless.
Despite the lo-fi production, the material is hardly primitive. Jazzy chords and modern classical dissonance abound, though subsumed under blackened strategies. The greasy bass work and copious pick slides reek of punk. Dissipated blastbeats and vocal reverb, which turns the shrieks into falling meteors of pain, combine for a “tunneling” feeling. Songs shift through oblique peaks and valleys, as themes resurface from the murk. Skilled musicians slumming in necro realms? Perhaps.
Supposedly a new EP called Where the Sun Is Silent… is due out soon on various media on Full Moon Productions and Northern Sky/Hospital Productions. Until then, Shadow Plays is available in the US from Ixiol and Ars Magna, and in Europe from Dis-order.
Oh come on, 15 years ago In The Woods… pulled a Burzum-worship type of vocal style off that sounds extremely more urgent and savage even today.
It’s the doubling delay and reverb that makes this sound unsettling more than anything.
A good one, but not terribly original. But, then again, so what.