The artwork suits the record perfectly and the packaging is very reminiscent of a gatefold double LP package, which gives the whole release a nice touch.This will more than likely look amazing, and if the recent speedy sell out of the Pyramids & Horseback collaboration LP+7" is any indication, this could very well be gone just as fast.
In our current climate of exponentially expanding micro-genres and sub-sub-niches, we're usually only a few mouse clicks away from finding or assigning a particular tag to any given musical artist. In instances when a group or solo musician seems to have hit upon a sound that hasn't already been neatly classified, it seems there's a whole host of anxious internetters just waiting to cobble together a set of hyphenated words to quickly solidify the identity of the unruly artist. Though both Pyramids and Horseback have existed now for what seems like eons by modern standards (you know, at least three or more years), astonishingly neither has been saddled with a lasting classification for the sounds they make. Whether this is due to their constantly shifting approach to compositional technique with each successive release, their fluctuating membership, or simply the fact that their not borrowing exclusively from any one source, it seems one thing is certain: both have succeeded in making music that is singularly their own, while also possessing a deeply affective humanity, initially alienating though it might appear.
Now that these two entities have combined forces for "A Throne Without a King", a new set of questions is raised in through its realization. Firstly, is it a split or a collaboration? Well, it's both - the album includes one new song from each individual group, as well as a long-form collaborative piece involving all personnel from Horseback and Pyramids playing together. Over the course of the three tracks that comprise the set the music ranges through territories of frenzied blasting, sonorous melody, arrhythmic clattering, frenetic riffing, frozen howls, and uneasy quiet. Horseback offers up the most recognizably structured piece of the three, a scabrous black metal weave, threaded through with a distinctly American twang. On their solo adventure Pyramids force together incongruent bits of hammering drum machine, screeching metallic textures and harmonious snippets of spacious piano into one implausibly seamless whole.
Strong as the preceding pieces are, it is the massive forty five minute collaborative piece that is really the centerpiece of the entire project - a sprawling mass of sonic moss, mud, concrete and galvanic crackle. Incorporating harsh electronics, buzzing swaths of guitar, low pulsing drones, improvised percussion and spectral voices issued from a distant universe, the "song" is a perfect synthesis of the diverse musical personalities involved in its creation. Though it could be inaptly described as any number wildly different types of music, like the parent groups that have channeled its chaotic essence into a tangible living form, it is a beast of unique nature - at once beguiling, terrifying and completely immersive. A more successful pairing of experimental-metal-drone-ambient-krautish-noise-rock collaborators you are unlikely to find, in our reality or any of its parallel relatives.
Track Listing (7")
Side A: Pyramids 'Phaedra's Love' (6:45)
Side B: Horseback 'Thee Cult Of Henry Flynt' (7:00)
Track Listing (LP)
Side C: Pyramids + Horseback 'A Throne Without A King pt. 1' (8:54)
Side C: Pyramids + Horseback 'A Throne Without A King pt. 2' (13:06)
Side D: Pyramids + Horseback 'A Throne Without A King pt. 3' (9:47)
Side D: Pyramids + Horseback 'A Throne Without A King pt. 4' (13:52)
Few albums represent an individual and genre defining milestone as does the self titled debut from Justin Broadrick's Jesu. Combining the considerable sonic weight of Godflesh with brittle melancholy melodies in hypnotic long-form structures, it provided ample evidence of Broadrick's myriad capabilities as a song writer and ceaselessly creative musical innovator. While the eight tracks that comprise the album truly sound like no one else, they also hinted at previously unexplored areas of tenderness and subtlety. Though Jesu went on to mine those more harmonious aspects of its sound on subsequent releases to great effect, none rivaled the debut in its perfectly crafted mixture of beauty, heaviness, hope and despair. Much has happened since the arrival of this album, both for Broadrick as well as the musical world(s) he inhabits, but nothing has diminished the gleaming radiance of this darkened gem.
Track Listing:
Your Path To Divinity (9:14)
Friends Are Evil (9:43)
Tired Of Me (9:31)
We All Faulter (6:56)
Walk On Water (11:23)
Sun Day (10:03)
Man / Woman (9:29)
Guardian Angel (8:06)
White Silence has an energy and a balance that feels like the work of seasoned vets, consummate professionals that have, with great heart, focus and authenticity, honed their songwriting ability in ways we feel fortunate to have witnessed first hand. If you followed the member's individual trajectories after Cave In's un- declared 2005 hiatus, you'd have been witness to a spectrum of songwriting capabilites. Brodsky's singer-songwriter eccentricies,Zozobra's 2-piece metallic power, Cloud's rock energy, and Doomrider's thunderous roll; all tastes of the potential a re-unified Cave In might present. 2009's Planets of Old was a four song return to form, a small taste of what Cave In were capable of producing with so much experience under their individual and collective belts.
White Silence brings a focused sense of dynamic and a variety that owes everything to the band's collective ability to do it all. The album's driving intro and delicate conclusion bookend a collection of tracks that have continued to fill and thrill Hydra Headquarters day after day for the last few months.
Decibel Magazine's #12 'Greatest Metal Albums of the Decade'! First time on vinyl since 2000! 'The Inalienable Dreamless' is their defining and final album . . .and easy contender for Greatest Grindcore Album of Forever ;)
