"At First Light," Morag Tong's Cinematic Doom Metal Blazes Forth (Video Premiere)
Morag Tong employs a certain kind of subtlety in plying their stoner-doom trade. Although their songs are monumental, they’re built from the ground up from engaging melodies and carefully plotted escalation. On their new album Grieve, the band funnels their toke-worthy riffs into vast, striking scenery that paints their sonic dominance into a picturesque landscape. Speaking of visualization, we’re premiering the music video for “At First Light” below.
…
…
“At First Light” gets loud, but there’s always a sense of skillful control behind the onslaught, and there’s swaths of drone-enriched hypnotism helping to give the loud bits the proper context. Melodic lead work lends the sometimes somber, sometimes hopeful proceedings an especially thoughtful extra layer, hinting at mysteries that only Morag Tong’s dialed-up amplifiers can possibly reveal. All of this points back to that sense of subtlety, and the full album only establishes it further: Grieve keeps an intriguing heaviness at its very core while being much, much more than that.
Regarding the album, the band comments:
“With ‘Grieve’, we wanted to create something huge and heavy, but also gorgeous, textured and atmospheric. Incorporating both massive, aggressive wall of sound sections and more pensive, stripped back ambient instrumentals I think we have hit that sweet spot – something anguished and anxious, crumbling and dangerous, yet eerily beautiful and oozing with a love for life itself.”
…
Grieve releases October 6th via Majestic Mountain Records.
