An Autumn for Crippled Children - Only the Ocean Knows (2012)

An Autumn for Crippled Children is a Dutch act which has been gradually advancing itself towards the upper echelons of atmospheric, depressive European black metal, showcasing a gorgeous and suicidal disposition that incorporates elements of doom, ambiance and what many are now dubbing 'blackgaze'. Raw guitars, lush and accessible melodies, floodlight bass lines, horrid rasps and even synthesizers collide in enormous overtures of sadness and solitude. They've been releasing one album per year thus far, with Everything (2011) edging forward in overall quality from its predecessor Lost (2010), and now they've made yet another incremental stride with Only the Ocean Knows, the first of their records to truly immerse me, if not for the entire playtime.

It does help that this is front-loaded with one of their best tracks to date, "Past Tense", in which all of the band's agonizing and attractive aural components collide into an effective emotional barrage. The proggy keys used to intro the piece are immediately fetching, and then they just overwhelm you with baleful, fuzz leaden chords that support a set of blistering, glistening melodies that stretch across the overcast, storming seas implied by the title and cover image. While this piece never really 'lets up', there are others through the track list that feature pianos, clean guitars and more sombre structures, creating a fusion of highs and lows that keep the listener from growing tired of any one particular aesthetic. That said, there are certainly some similarities in the riffs being wrought throughout. The tortured, Burzum-like inflection in the vocals seeks to lie just below the apex of the guitar melodies, but you can still sense the pain, as if this were some eerie amalgamation of Filosofem, the post-rock of Mogwai or Explosions in the Sky, and guitar-drenched 90s shoegazer works like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive or the (oldest) Catherine Wheel albums.

I should state that this is 100% mood music, fit for musing on one's presumed nothingness in contrast to the broader world beyond the self. Seeing that I live a mere 100 yards from the Atlantic Ocean, I found it to provide a worthwhile accompaniment for a sober, evening stroll. It's not party music, so the likelihood of you making a connection during the screaming of your apple sauce-starved offspring, a Superbowl gathering, or in the presence of bass-blasted urban ghetto gangsta neighborhood pollution is about nil. Not all of the riff patterns here are all that innovative or unpredictable, and stylistically it's not a major step above Everything, but the band has really fleshed out its sound here, and the overall flow of the album feels more consistent and compelling than anything they've previously released. I enjoyed this, and in lieu of our collective loss of bands like Lifelover and Apati, this really helps fill a niche, whether your tastes run from ColdWorld, to the sadder recordings of Benighted in Sodom, or to almost any of the more accessible blackgaze acts. 

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

http://www.myspace.com/crippledchildren2009

An Autumn for Crippled Children - Everything (2011)

Last year's Lost was an intriguing if ultimately vapid debut album from another band exploring the arcs of atmospheric and post-rock flavor within the medium of depressive black metal. I was quite smitten with a number of the tracks, and the band's razor kissing, blissful sense for textured melody, but the album was about half attention worthy and half attention deficit. These Dutchmen fall under a similar curtain of emotional contrast to the Swedish groups Svarti Loghin and Lifelover, or perhaps the overrated French Alcest, but not so much that they could be confused for such peers. Everything, the band's sophomore, follows a different cover aesthetic than its predecessor, promising a whited out sky against which the wings of birds and the eaves of skeletal trees strain, much like the band on its course towards defining misery and light.

This time, the band have asserted a slightly more progressive approach to their writing which is far better at rounding out the various 4-5 minute track lengths. The clean, desolate guitar tones that teeter upon the precipice of warmth return, with the same curving and lovely bass lines, but the melodic insinuations feel superior from the start, and continue to excel throughout the 44 minutes of the experience. "Forever Never Falls" transforms from an airy, elegant substance to a rush of fuzzed, painful black rasping and streamed chords, and then to a proggy streak of synthesizers that erupt into another emotional, wrist cutting climax. It's not one of the best here, but it sets up a framework into which the trio thrives. "Formlessness" possesses a resonant elegance with its bridge melody; "Absence of Contrast" a delicious breakdown with bass and piano; and "Her Dress as a Poem, Her Death as the Night" an amazing sheen of melody below with a turbulent percussion ruptures the listener's sanctity.

It's quite amusing, bewitching and disturbing in equal measures, and unlike Lost, I never felt that the album quite fell off its wheels. That's not to say that there are not a few flaws holding it back from the forerunners of its niche. The vocals, in particular, while appreciably torturous, tend to drone along without much memorable structure, even if not for excess periods of time. The more spacious, droning passages are oft imbued with instant hipster freakouts that are more jarring than interesting, and I was drawn to ill memories of bands like Litury or Krallice (well below these Dutchmen in terms of quality). On the whole, though, I rather enjoyed this trip, for its fusion of unnerving dissonance and glistening, open-vein beauty. Perhaps it's not a massive stride forward in depth or value from their debut, but it's more consistently haunting.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

http://www.myspace.com/crippledchildren2009

An Autumn for Crippled Children - Lost (2010)

This new Dutch act is flaunting quite the moniker, more than a mouthful and yet surprisingly effective at conveying the mood of the music they write. An Autumn for Crippled Children have every intention of assembling their own despair, reaching through this recording and then pinning it all to your back, and to an extent, this debut succeeds in doing so. The only major flaw it needs to contend with is a lack of consistency. Only a few songs deep, I felt like the band had already fired all the shots, and the middle of this recording becomes a mild trial to survive, until a few of the closing tracks offer the hint of salvation.

By now, I'm assuming most fans of depressive black or doom metal are aware of the bands Lifelover and ColdWorld. To my ears, An Autumn for Crippled Children fall into this small category of artists who can somehow enable a musical accessibility alongside the extremity of the vocal presence. Take the driving, shimmering walls of guitar that defined mid-era Katatonia, fuzz out the distortion so that it sounds like a rain of razors seeking a tribute of blood in return for every added melody, and then add the tortured rasping of many in the depressive black genre. Sprinkle with clean pianos and guitars, to create a rising and ebbing tide of sadness which will affect both the contemporary music listener and the dweller on the cold fringe.

For a few tracks, this process works wonderfully. "To Set Sails to the End of the World" is like a breathtaking vista of pain, slowly revealing it to yourself through a crest of harsh, melodic acid and spacious valleys of wailing calms. "Tragedy Bleeds All Over the Lost" is a measured thunder of depression, with finely molded, subtle shifts to the guitar chords and a hypnotic bass line that pops along beneath the despair. But after this point, I feel like the quality drops off. "A Dire Faith", for example, has some nice post-rock segments, but when it picks up to a strangling fuzz crescendo and the vocals begin tearing open the chords, the riff just wasn't so memorable. There is nothing really 'bad' about any of the material, it's just a matter of having 1-2 moments of bliss and then some uninteresting filler. Exceptions would be "Ghost Light", one of the shorter and sweeter moments on the album, with the nearest this band will come to a 'breakdown' around 3:00, with a cool driving pattern over which a solemn melody glistens. The end of the record is also quite solid. I speak of the dour, restfulness of the "Gaping Void of Silence" and the mind stabbing pain of "Never Shall Be Again".

There is certainly room out there for more of these expressive ciphers of sorrow and corrupted melody, but I do feel the songs here are slightly less engrossing than those of a ColdWorld or Lifelover. The atmosphere of An Autumn for Crippled Children is something to behold, and in truth I really like how they produce their sounds. It might feel painful for some, but I think there is an enormous potential, if they could just compose better patterns of chords which can steer the imagination much further than what they've assembled here. Seek this out if you're starved for disaffection, but I have a nagging suspicion we'll be hearing more, and better, from this trio.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

http://www.myspace.com/crippledchildren2009