Shroud of Despondency - Pine (2012)

As with the two previous Shroud of Despondency albums I've encountered, Pine drags its listener into an emotional, conceptual journey which spans the realms of thriving nature and a cold, final death. The simple and almost surreal cover hints at obscured, rustic scenery, and the band does a good job of culling this through the evocative songwriting, whereas the 2011 album Dark Meditations in Monastic Seclusion lived up to its cave-like faceplate. But the real strength of this Midwest entity is its songwriting, a rare ability to thread creative melodies and dynamics into their tracks that keep the listener affixed throughout. the experience Rory Heikkila never got the memo that underground black metal be dull, repetitious and entirely redundant, so there's a subtext of hopeful craftmanship here reminiscent of an Agalloch or Cormorant, only I like Shroud's music much more.

The acoustic intro to this thing: "Winged Seed in the Breeze", the first of the four "Wanderlust" instrumentals on the album, is utterly brilliant. Low, brooding effects and crackling leaf sounds in a steady, subdued wind help the plucky clean guitar passage win its way deep into the solemnity of the autumn spirit. It's successors more or less continue the same texture and atmosphere, but each layers in something different: narrative samples, pianos or added guitar effects. They go a long way to break up the heavier tunes and grant the album a consistent center, almost as if they were beckoning the audience with a brief meditative focus before drowning he or she back into the sinister strides of harrowing blasts and the vicious black rasping. Yet, these longing ligaments and lamentations would mean nothing if the meat of the metal wasn't also so effective...

What you'll first notice is just how much effort is placed in the construction of the guitars. Take the first barn burner, "Overshadow" and you'll experience all manner of careening, ascending and descending melodies and dynamic fluctuations where they cycle from blasted, Swedish style melodic death circa Dissection to chugging alongside a raunchy tone with guttural vocals in the bridge, to an almost psychedelic, swirling climax. Don't get too attached to any one aesthetic, because then the next track "New Trees" opens with excellent, surgical death metal riffing and teensy sweeps which inevitably lead to the glorious, mystical lead melodies of its own bridge. No two tunes here are exactly alike, for example "Half Opens Gates" is a melodic black doom epic with loads of atmospheric guitar crescendos, while "Light Words, Dark Graves" is an almost grinding black/death surge. Hell, closer "The Unchaining of an Animal" is pure guitar folk with clean, layered vocals...

Pine might very well have turned into some scattershot assembly of ideas with poor execution, but strangely enough it all seems to come together in this rural tapestry of regrets. The mix of the music is subdued, underground and independent yet maintains the complete clarity of a more professionally budgeted effort. The lyrics are paeans to nature and depression loaded with tasteful, simple prose, almost like a black metal Faulkner, and the ability of the musicians knows no real bounds. I wouldn't say this was perfect, if only because I feel I need to be in a specific mood to immerse myself in its sorrowed boughs, and despite it's many strengths the individual songs are not always the most memorable out there. However, I enjoyed it more than either of their previous full-length efforts, and its talent and vision are indisputable. Fans of the well-liked, aforementioned Agalloch and Cormorant, or Minnesota's Obsequiae, or hell, even the first two Opeth records (Orchid and Morningrise), where they were writing in a more rustic vein with lots of acoustic appeal, should snap this right up.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (from the footsteps and the ashes)

http://www.myspace.com/shroudofdespondency

Shroud of Despondency - Dark Meditations in Monastic Seclusion (2011)

It's been nine years since Shroud of Despondency released their debut For Eternity Brings No Hope through the great Bindrune Recordings, but those years seem to have been spent productively, with the band evolving into an interesting sound that draws upon both variation and heavy use of atmosphere, slowly drawing the listener into a realm of suicidal tension and the bliss of abandoning all hope. The cover of Dark Meditations in Monastic Seclusion is an interesting choice; it's primacy beckons the listener into a cervix-like cavern of darkness, and I'd certainly claim that the album does as advertised, though a few of the elements here threaten to draw the listener out, briefly, from the experience.

For one, there are a number of vocal styles being used here, not all of which are created equal. I don't particularly care for the thin, clean vocals being used over the latter half of the acoustic/folk intro "Looking Out, Seeing One Last Ray of Light", or through "Sybil". They have a Celtic folk feel to them, but they don't feel fully formed, whereas the gravelly, aggressive tone assumed in "Homo Homini Lupus" is quite good, reminding me of the vocals Nocturno Culto has been spitting over the past few Darkthrone records, if a little more brutal. They also use simpler rasps and higher pitched background screams to great effect, evoking a multi-dimensional spike of emotional pain. The acoustic guitar sequences are also not that interesting, though they seem to work more when the band add atmosphere to the back through edge of perception chanting and tiny lead guitars ("Sybil").

Otherwise, this album is fairly well composed, with an earthen, natural tone to the guitars which benefits the variation in the riffing, from somber, sluggish beauty to a frigid, repressed onslaught of more traditional melodic black fare. In particular, I truly enjoyed the sample sequence used through the last 3 minutes of "Parting of the Way", in which a survivor of suicide talks about his experience over one of the better acoustic guitar segment on the album. It absorbed me completely, and I was not expecting this. The black metal tracks "Sullen Murmur Oppressive Stillness" and "To Glisten In All the Colors of Distress" are quite good, and there's one extended acoustic track ("Flicker of the Ardent Light") which avoids the less impressive clean vocals and instead throws in some piano to great effect.

Shroud of Despondency are one of the better bands at capturing that open Midwest space in their music, coupled with bleak human emotions. They're not as experimental or dark as Blood of the Black Owl, or as caustically hopeless as Celestiial, but I feel like they might really appeal to fans of the early Agalloch album Pale Folklore. Despite my mixed reaction to the vocals and clean guitars, I feel that there's an enormous potential within this band, some but not all of which has been brought to the table here. It's a thoughtful album, though not a perfect one, and if you're looking for a lucid examination of depression, it's engrossing enough to spend an hour exploring it's cornucopia of gloom.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

http://www.myspace.com/shroudofdespondency