Entry 424 - Ethereal Shroud - They Became the Falling Ash

 

Three songs. One hour.

Any album that has songs of that length is really going to have to justify the time spent with each song. In my short time listening to They Became the Falling Ash, this does indeed seem to be the case.

Ethereal Shroud plays atmospheric black metal at a middling pace. While there are guitars present, they hardly feel like the main focus. They will add a melody throughout the song and be one of the focal points, but there is a lot going on in these songs... the guitars are just a singular part of the whole.

The same can be said about any one part of Ethereal Shrouds music. The effects, the vocals, drums, keyboards... they are all part of the greater whole. Each serves a purpose, to enrich the entirety of the music. It does this by a delicate balancing act of all the ingredients. The vocals for instance are mixed back of both the guitars and keyboards and have a vast amount of reverb on them. This makes them sound like they are being chanted from a great distance away or from another realm.

The keyboards similarly are seemingly back in the mix. They are there to add atmosphere, and when you pay attention they are playing wonderful chords and melodies. The same thing can be said about the guitars. They are mixed distantly, though a little less so than the rest of the instruments... everything though feels like it is coming from a far away land, not entirely of this plane of existence.

That's the beauty of this album. Everything is presented in such a way that no one element (except the guitars at points) call too much attention to themselves. The music washes over me and I let it whisk me away 20 minutes at a time. The fact that I've missed this album for so many years is a huge shame... but that has been rectified now.

(Quick side note, side B of the album states that the song is 10 minutes long. This is not the case, it incorporates the outro from the first song and the intro to the last song making the side of the LP >18 minutes long. This threw me for a huge loop at first until I figured this out)