Style: Dissonant black metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: Absolute hopelessness
Thoughts: As if Deathspell Omega has anything to prove at this point. They have shown time and time again that they are in the elite of elite in the world of metal. Not one musical act has the same level of song writing prowess that they do time and time again. There are many bands out there that will write masterful album after masterful album... but Deathspell will write genre defining album after genre defining album... the difference is subtle but enormous at the same time.
Salowe Vision shows that Deathspell can write a song truly devoid of hope, devoid of all things that bring a sliver of light. It is a truly desperate instrumental, one that fits the cover of the album perfectly. The mourning of people abandoned by god, facing an eternal drought... this is the emotions that this opening instrumental brings. It's incredible, and one of the strongest tracks the band has ever written.
One may have gathered by this point that Deathspell Omega is one of my favorite black metal bands... scratch that, they are one of my favorite metal bands... let's try that again... they are one of my favorite bands, period. End of story... and this EP is another reason for that. It continues the ideas and concepts that were started by Paracletus but tries with various degrees of success to heighten the emotional impact.
The opener aside, there is a LOT going on in these songs. Every one of them lays on the dissonance thick, and barely gives the listener a moment to breathe. When those moments do come the band layers on so much negative emotion that it's nearly suffocating. The transition from Sand to Abrasive Swirling Murk is one of the strongest examples of this.
Sand is a short song that allows the listener the smallest of respite, though it is steeped in sorrow and hopelessness. It's only about a minute long, but when it ends any sort of reprieve is lost. The chaos has returned and will not be content until the listeners sanity has gone with the peace.
If anything Drought takes the concepts of Paracletus and further segregates them. The melody is contained to two moments in the album, the remainder is arguably more chaotic than even Fas... was. It's a brutal twenty minutes, but this is not about the quantity of music contained here... rather this all about the quality that the band has set.
After this they would have nearly an impossible task of topping their dissonant sound... and needless to say they did not succeed. Outside of it's amazing album title the follow up here would be a rather large disappointment. That said, for an eight year period they created some of the strongest music in any genre.
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