yellow eyes

Yellow Eyes Dizzies Minds with "Rare Field Ceiling," Their Fifth and Latest Album

yellow eyes

Through a stylish take on atmospheric antiquity, New York’s Yellow Eyes provides a distinct point of view that challenges the current dichotomy of black metal and its second-wave revival. On their latest album Rare Field Ceiling, Yellow Eyes does for metal what The Witch (2015) did for horror films, taking beloved themes of the craft and projecting them through a fresh, captivating, and dizzying lens. And while Yellow Eyes pours forth the ethos of an underground extreme metal band, they are hardly obscure. Active since 2012, Rare Field Ceiling is the troupe’s fifth full-length — the band’s hard work has paid off in terms of earning respect from refined palates, but also when it comes to the development of their sound. Throughout their career, the quartet has provided titles which could provide endless permutations of meaning while exploding an unrelenting heartbeat in which metal listeners take comfort, and ultimately, come to expect.

Immersion Trench Reverie took these efforts one step further by dialing up the ambiance, with tracks like “Old Alpine Pang” providing the crisp whispers of a pre-industrial soundscape. As the next chapter of the odyssey is installed with Rare Field Ceiling, the fantasy has now spiraled into dreamy delirium.

Opening once more with another instrumental humming fit for an anachronistic travel scene, the muted chimes and lingering synth of “Warmth Trance Reversal” provide welcome to the chaos. The atmosphere to which we are first introduced recurs in bridges from riff to crunchy riff; with feedback bubbling into blast beats, “Nutrient Painting” fuses a punk rock attitude into the earnestly dire tone of weeping melodies. Such a concept is further developed on the title track, which places victims on their head before shoving them down spiraling dungeon stairs.

Lyrically, Rare Field Ceiling is a minimalist take on that familiar castle-laden tale that’s been too often muddled by flowery language. Together, these elements make for an album that you won’t only be proud to tell your friends about, but is accessible enough to breed excitement of all things experimental in a variety of heavy music consumers.

A massive shape is falling
She is calving
We are close
Great slipping rib
Gas station fume
Above an eerie light is forming
A massive shape is falling
We are close
Don’t know the height
I can no longer see the forest in this light

— “Light Delusion Curtain”

Rare Field Ceiling released today via Gilead Media.

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