Blood of the Black Owl - Light the Fires! (2012)

The strength of Seattle's Blood of the Black Owl has always been its cultural novelty, hypnotic architecture and strong sense of theme and place, qualities unbroken by their latest full-length Light the Fires! Perfect atmosphere for either sunset or smokehouse, their songwriting represents more of a thorough, ritualistic transcendence more so than a gathering of riffs and melodies, and thus it's placed well outside of the traditional extreme metal realm, despite the band's incorporation of black and doom elements, which admittedly do not play a huge role here until the latter half of the track order. Spiritual, vacuous, droning and at times haunting, you're not like to hear much else like it out there, and even if it doesn't evolve heavily from the sounds of its predecessors, the increase in production values and the sheer escape invested in its architecture ensure its worthiness.

No strangers to duration, Light the Fires! clocks in at close to 75 minutes, eschewing the shorter, singular track format of A Banishing Ritual (2010) for a return to the staggering length of the first two records. Normally, I'd scoff at such swollen content, but in the case of Blood of the Black Owl, it's rather essential as they slowly unravel the oppressive walls of modern existence surrounding you and conjure you back to times of ritual, a communal interface with the natural and metaphysical. A pagan, auditory altar. I rather enjoyed the progression here, through the more ambient-focused tracks that represent the first 30+ minutes of material to the darker, sluggish and funereal turbulence of "Sundrojan" and "Soil Magicians". Numerous emotional climes are explored, from mystery to misery and back again, often beautiful despite themselves and the band's intentions to suck the black vapors from the listener's soul and devour them with droning confidence.

Instrumentally, the band explores a broad swath of sound, from modest acoustic guitars and ambient wailing to tribal or ringing percussion, from bird call-like, fluting tones and rattles to organs. The vocals are just as distinct and diverse, cycling through passages of deep, introspective chant ("Caller of Spirits") to folkish psychedelia circa Pink Floyd ("Rise and Shine"), to grisly, epic charnel growls devoid of warmth on the heaving, black/doom material. In particular, I rather like how they double up the extreme vocals with a more solemn, clean timbre (as in "Sundrojan") to create these moving, morose vistas. One particular favorite here, "Soil Magicians" evolves from soothing pipes, whispers and stream samples into this crushing sequence of fuzzy downcast doom and discord which rattled my ghost to its very foundations, and I might add that this was over the space of over 13 minutes...not an easy task to pull off without numbing or exhausting the listener, and such basal and simplistic guitar progressions you might expect on an old Pentagram or Cathedral record.

This is far clearer sounding than the past albums, with brighter tones to the ambient/ritual sequences and a more gut-wrenching swell to the distorted guitars, and in truth it might prove an easier point of entry for newcomers wishing to delve into the project's unique sound. That said, the writing doesn't quite take the veteran listener by surprise with the same level of nuance and novelty it once did. The sound palette is better expressed, but the tectonic shifting of the band's stylistic contrasts doesn't reveal much surprise. In particular I'd like to hear the band weave in some faster material, whether it manifest in sheer percussive rage or a more psychedelic freakout using organs, flutes or guitars. Not the normal modus operandi for a metal band that favors such drawn out compositions, I realize, but Blood of the Black Owl is far more than a typical funeral doom band, and a little added aural anarchy wouldn't hurt them. All told, though, Light the Fires! is another captivating experience, unlikely to turn away fans of A Feral Spirit or the s/t debut.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

http://bindrunerecordings.com/

Blood of the Black Owl - A Banishing Ritual (2010)

Blood of the Black Owl's previous meditation, A Feral Spirit, was a haze inducing ritual of both beauty and terror, as extreme as it could be tranquil, and really promoted the band to the forefront of our metal scene's peripheral artists, capable of a vision far outside the status quo even in such eclectic genres as black, doom, drone or folk metal. There is simply not much else out there that can capture the repressed spirit of native America in musical form, and place such a tax on the soul of the listener. For A Banishing Ritual, the reins seem to have been tightened a notch, partly due to the fact it consists of a single track in four 'movements', all of which combine for 40 minutes of intense immersion that can drown out your day.

Chet W. Scott (of Ruhr Hunter and many other experimental projects) returns here with collaborators James Woodhead and Daniel Ellis Harrod for a lengthy, disturbing journey. Into the trials of jarring strings, black swelling ambiance and chant-like, ritual vocal we are taken with the first of the tracks motions, 'Intent', which is possibly the most fascinating of the album. "The Statement of Will (Movement II)", which occupies only about 4 minutes of "A Banishing Ritual", opens with an extremely basal, raw doom metal rhythm that is soon bypassed by a montage of eerie woodwinds, ringing strings and carnal vocals, only to return to the guitars for the transition into "Chant of the Captured Spirit (Movement III)", which is the most ominous of the album's stages, 11 minutes of slowly escalating noise, warbled voices and warped synthesizers that tide over into trilling flutes and soothing, daemonic whispers. "The Final Banishing (Movement IV)" grows from this into sparse, further fucked whispers that are cut through with occasional jaunts onto an acoustic guitar, distant shrill synths that emulate the whipping winds of perdition and a climactic finale which feels like being hunted through a cold Northwestern night by regressive cannibal savages.

Like any successful work of its kind, A Banishing Ritual sucks the listener into a vortex of the unfamiliar and then peels away each layer of sanity from his/her stiff mind. I didn't actually appreciate it quite so much as its predecessor A Feral Spirit, but that is partly owed to the single track format...I simply didn't feel compelled by its entirety as I did with many of the songs off the prior release. Regardless, it's highly engrossing and I am very eager to experience this when hiking season begins for me in the summer. A wondrous, though not always pleasant soundtrack to the empty places of the wild (and the soul) untouched, at least temporarily, by Quiznos, Verizon and Lady Gaga.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10]

http://www.myspace.com/bloodoftheblackowl

Celestiial/Blood of the Black Owl Split (2008)

The best split releases are those that feature unreleased material from two or more artists that have already smitten you. This would be one of those cases, a showcase for two of the best bands in the US to produce a hybrid of backwoods ethnic vibes, funeral doom tones and brilliant, flowing ambience. I cannot imagine a better pairing for such a release, and once again Bindrune brings the quality.

Celestiial is a beastly trio from Minnesota, featuring Tannder Anderson on the vocals and guitar (Autumnal Winds) and Jason Walton (Agalloch) on bass. Their debut Desolate North was impressive, but in truth I prefer this new track "White Depths Dove the Red-Eyes", a nearly 17 minute sprawling vista of scintillating ambience, a rise and fall swell of steadily shifting percussion and bleak rasping vocals. The band's commitment to the empty beauty and purity of our northern US regions is fully translated through both the sorrow and glory of their minimal compositions, an aperture of rural exploration.

"Contemplating the Death of an Olde Friend" is a darker piece, but just as mesmerizing. Chet W. Scott is the man behind Blood of the Black Owl and also the man responsible for bringing you this release. Again chiming in at the 17 minute length, "Contemplating..." opens with a mesh of repetetive strings, flutes and grizzled distortion beneath the cerebral black pitch of Scott's narrative vocals. After three minutes, the track 'devolves' into an ambient underpining with some sparse guitar plucks, beautiful tonal vocals and remains along this course until the end, in which the creepy black rasp returns to bury the coffin.

This is a fantastic split effort, and the fact you can't get the tracks elsewhere makes it an essential acquisition. Both of these acts are among the cutting edge of what the USA has to offer in terms of our own ethnic identity, our own culture. So many post-black metal, ambient black or funeral doom bands have shit to offer by comparison. Celestiial and Blood of the Black Owl have much to offer, their full-lengths are uniformly wonderful and the material here is no exception. Expressive, original and hypnotic.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10]

http://www.myspace.com/bloodoftheblackowl
http://www.myspace.com/bindrunerecordings

Blood of the Black Owl - A Feral Spirit (2008)

The s/t debut from this Chet W. Scott project was a bleak and wonderfully (or should I say horrifically) realized effort of blackened Northwestern doom, drone, ambient, and a dash of folk. A breath of fresh air, regardless of how much carrion is carried on the scent.

A Feral Spirit is another meditative journey into the grim face of nature, as wholly American as it is disturbing. "Spell of the Elk" is an opening chant set to percussion and subtle ambient synths, with a few droning noises. "Crippling of Age" brings tortured black vocals, paced acoustic drums and a hypnotic wall of fuzzy distorted guitars. A terrifying track, yet it breaks for some scintillating guitars after the halfway point. "He Who Walked Away from the Fire & Laughed as He Bled" is a more psychedelic journey combining all the elements of the first two tracks. "Void" is a black cycle with some clever pipe organ segments dispersed within. "The Melancholy Article" is almost like a super minimal trip hop piece with flutes, horrid poetry and loads of atmosphere. "Unattainable Vistas of Our Remembrance" is a desolate, driven track with a great crescendo of sadly melodic guitars. "Forest of Decrepitude" and "Inter-Weaving the Beyond" are more typical of funeral doom/drone pieces, yet far more interesting than the majority of music in this sub-sub-genre. "Journey of the Plague Year" ends the album, just as hauntingly as it began.

In the end I enjoyed this more than the debut. While that was a pretty colossal effort, this feels slightly more fleshed out and I truly enjoyed the diversity within. It's a beautiful record from start to finish, a hypnotism that is guaranteed to steer your mind to places of longing, into the empty wilderness of both the physical and cerebral world. There is not much else out there like this, it's very much worth owning if you are a fan of any of its musical components. One of the most unique and entrancing 'metal' entities in the US today.

Verdict: Epic Win (9/10)

http://www.myspace.com/bloodoftheblackowl