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Unearthly Trance: Season of séance, science of silence
23/02/10 || Khlysty
A few months back, I tried to convert GD followers to Unearthly Trance, by reviewing their latest record, Electrocution. Seems that the reception was pretty tepid, if I can remember correctly the discussion in the forums. No matter, though; I’m a stubborn bastard, so now I will tell you about their first record, “Season of Séance, Science of Silence” (from now on to be called “SoS, SoS” in this here review), in the hope that you guys will come to appreciate those crazy-ass Thelemic blackened doomsters from U.S. of fucking A. as much as I do.
See, Unearthly Trance (a trio comprised by Ryan Lypinsky on guitar and vocals, Darren Verni on drums and Jay Newman on bass) is not your basic run-of-the-mill extreme doom band. No, these fuckers have tried and succeeded in making doom even uglier, more desperate, more angular and more user-unfriendly that it already is, by injecting it with a healthy dose of other extreme metal elements –especially black metal- and going for the jugular of the listener.
“SoS, SoS” is the band’s first record, it came out in 2003 and sported a mix job by none other than Steven “Sunn0))), Khanate, plus a legion of other projects” O’ Malley. This credential secures that on the low-end front we’re covered neatly, so, now, we can move on and see what this band has in store for us. And what it has is pretty much damaging: with four of the six songs moving up from the nine-minute mark, one has nothing to expect, but suffocating sheets of downtuned, sludgy guitar, slug-speed tempos and a really agonized vocal delivery by Ryan Lipinsky, that covers the whole spectrum from a not-exactly-black-metal rasp to some almost atonal clean singing.
The genius of the band, though, lies in songwriting and execution. The songs, while generally pretty slow, have enough tempo- and scale changes to keep them from turning into one-dimensional low-end-marathons. The band uses what dynamics it can come up with, within the framework of their chosen genre, to infuse the songs with quite a few surprises here and there and to make them all the more ugly and desperate and all the more interesting and captivating. On the execution front, it’s pretty obvious from the beginning of the record that everything will be in the red. The intensity levels are continuously high, so much so, that the record can easily become a really tiring experience for a listener who’s not used into such extremities. To give an analogy, this sounds like being constantly pulverized by a giant fist.
Most of the songs are based around riffing that borders on atonal, but with enough diversity so as not to be considered interchangeable. Also, there seems to be a VERY malignant aura all over the record, making it sound more ritualistic than it probably should (but, hey, when a band credits Aleister Crowley as the lyricist of “Mass of the Phoenix”, what can really one expect…). And, all the while, there’s a sense of constant dread and inhuman coldness permeating the whole of the recording, making some moments of it bone-marrow-chilling. All in all, “SoS, SoS” seems more and more like a ritualistic endeavor and less than simply an extreme doom record, while never entering the realm of amorphous sludge and drone.
Of course, the band started to gradually change its sound after “SoS, SoS”; a wise move, since it would’ve been impossible for them to continue down this extremely intense, extremely ugly musical path. But, as a declaration of intent and as a fully formed first record, displaying almost all sides of this great band, “SoS, SoS” is unfuckwithable. So, bottom line is that, if you like to explore the extremes in your music and you have open ears and open mind, you should grab this record A.S.A.P.
- Information
- Released: 2003
- Label: Music Cartel
- Website: www.unearthlytrance.com
- Band
- Ryan Lipinsky: vocals, guitar
- Jay Newman: bass
- Darren Verni: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Raised By the Wolves
- 02. Mass of the Phoenix
- 03. When Anti-Humanity Flourishes
- 04. Wandering Winter Winds
- 05. Black Heart / Black Lung
- 06. The Aftermath Was Morbid
