By: Eeli Helin
Album Type:
Full Length
Date Released: 20/09/2019
Label:
Independent
”The Waking Void” CD//CS//DD track listing:
1.
Ancestral Spirit
2.
Ritual of Fire
3.
Null
4.
Post-Modern Prometheus
5.
Void
6.
Withering Aeons
7.
Black Widow Hourglass
8.
Lazarus Reflex
9.
Begrudging Lucidity
10.
Guest of the Cavern/Mind Altar
11.
Blue Rose
The Review:
Unfurl
are one of those bands who are flying under the radar way too fluently while
they'd deserve all the attention possible from bigger and smaller medias. Their
debut full-length "The Waking Void" was released
on September 20th and the buzz started only afterwards, given that it's
reasonably increasing constantly. Struggling to get press is pretty much a
standard today, but it's bands like this that makes all that seem very unfair;
after all, "The Waking Void" is amongst the better albums of the year,
and one hell of a debut that came from nowhere.
Having
enthusiastic music nerds as friends is a benefit, that proved to be worthwhile
with this release as well. After being directed to this album by the #lord
himself, it proficiently stole my undivided attention for days. "The
Waking Void" is a voluble mix of blackened and partly noisy death
metal with shoegazey and mathgrind leanings. One of the most interesting
creations on the record are the shorter, noisy and mostly electronic tracks
scattered throughout, offering brief pauses and moments of ease amidst the
intense battering. While the inclusion of such seemingly minuscule tracks might
feel out of place at first, they end up being very integral for the narrative
of the entire album.
Apart
from the interludes, the heart and soul of "The Waking Void"
obviously lies in the main tracks. The beating starts on the second track "Ritual of Fire", showcasing
the high compositional level and underlying tones quite well right from the
beginning. "Post-Modern Prometheus"
carries you away into the noisier, black metal-esque end of the spectrum and
holds within one of the most breathtaking breakdown of this decade. The
production atmosphere is like a tightening grip, but doesn't turn suffocating
as the organic feel is cherished with precision and thought. A short
intermission leads the listener to "Withering
Aeons", grooving like a motherfucker all the way through to what is
perhaps the greatest surprise on the album.
"Black Widow Hourglass"
is a moment of pure mourning, expressed through clean vocals and guitars,
textured with ambient washes and floaty drum beats. Flowing straight into "Lazarus Reflex", this pair
represents the band in their best, weaving a plethora of wildly different
flavours into each other seamlessly. It's soon obvious that with these tracks, Unfurl
kick in a whole new gear. While the first half had it's own strengths, the
latter is where the band relies solely on their personal expression, finding a
whole new kind of coherency and momentum to themselves.
Towards
the end, the tracks progress into more diverse and fascinating ones, and by the
time the final piece "Blue Rose"
is over, you'll find yourself wondering why Unfurl aren't on every single
metal enthusiast's or music journalist's lips, why an album of this caliber was
released independently, why you haven't heard about them before. As futile as
those questions are by now, they still bear a meaning in today's music
industry, underlining the fact that without heaps of green and direct
connections to certain persons of interest, a lot of amazing music gets buried
underneath the rubble. We can only hope that this kind of material finds its
own audience, preferably sooner than later.
”The
Waking Void” is avialble HERE
