By: Conor O’Dea
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 06/10/2017
Label: 20 Buck Spin
“Curse of Conception” is a glorious
success and a dazzling evolution of an already excellent band.
“Curse of Conception” CD//DD//LP track listing:
1).
Earthbound
2).
Curse Of Conception
3).
To Fly On Broken Wings
4).
Starless Age (Enshrined)
5).
Graveside Invocation
6).
Spectral Savior
7).
Wakien
8).
Onward, Inward
The Review:
I
tend to approach reviews with a fair degree of two things: reservation and
resolve. Reservation, because it is actually pretty tough to write about music
you love and try to convey the message of why you love it to a broad audience
without jumping to superlatives in every sentence. It is a task I always
approach with trepidation, and this anxiety is in direct positive correlation
with how much I love the music in question. Resolve is obviously a corollary of
this: one has to steel oneself to 'analyze' what one really just wants to
'experience'. How can I accurately convey not just my enjoyment of art someone
else has created, but ultimately, share my profound appreciation with not just
other potential fans, but the artist or artists themselves? Particularly
without either missing the interpretive boat or engaging in sloppy ellipsis?
When
I was lucky enough to convince THE SLUDGELORD to let me review Spirit Adrift's
“Chained to Oblivion”, I had already
been listening to it almost non-stop for several weeks. It was one of the
albums of 2016 that I was most excited about, that I found most profoundly
moving. It had and still has all the makings of a genre classic. That genre
being heavy metal, not one of the vast and ever- propagating subgenres. My love
of the debut album actually intensified some of my reservations about reviewing
“Curse of Conception”: was I going to
like it? Had Nate changed direction
substantively? Was it still going to be the band I had grown to love? And here
I default to throwing around superlatives: “Curse
of Conception” is a glorious success and a dazzling evolution of an already
excellent band.
I
would actually be hard pressed to say what 'element' I like most about Spirit Adrift on this album, but the vocals are again what
truly set the band apart. Nate's harmonies are
epic in every sense of the word, and they are brilliantly punctuated here by
cresting on top of a guitar tone that somehow retains the doom-heavy fuzz of “Chained to Oblivion”, yet brings in a
razor-sharp brightness that calls to mind the Metallica
with whom I first fell in love. The switch from Orange to the EVH tonal palate
works flawlessly, letting Spirit Adrift remain
deeply true to everything that made the first album stand out while allowing an
adventurous, exciting sonic reframing. Sabbathian elements are retained in
vocal passages like the title track without every descending into copy-catting
or worship. Spirit Adrift take their influences
seriously and respectfully, but there is never a sense of retread or
anachronism; this album is grounded in tradition but massively innovative in
approach. On tracks like “Starless Age”,
this growth expresses itself as a mature fusion of some beloved and sacred
moments in the metal cannon with a clear, decisive compositional voice.
And
lest I forget: the album is joyous, fun, revels in the interplay of the
aforementioned harmonies with spectacular riffage and never-without-purpose
soloing. Check out a burner like “Graveside
Invocation”; you know Nate knows
he's knocking it out of the park here. The peaks and troughs and dramatic build
from song to song work like the best film scripts: pacing is everything. Case
in point: the wonderful acoustic country-tinged psychedelia build of “Walkien”. I literally laughed out loud
at how perfect the change was here at 1:59. Epic, indeed. I've wasted
enough of your time: you should be listening to this album and not reading
reviews about it. Go get it. Remember why metal is awesome.
“Curse Of Conception”
is available here
