Style: atmospheric rock/metal, dark rock
Primary Emotions/Themes: the dagger
Thoughts: A slow hum fades into existence from nothingness. Over time Thus hum reveals itself to be a highly distorted guitar with reverb phased through every single frequency that it is uttering. The notes shift and a riff forms again from seemingly nothing. A distant and oddly eerie female voice starts chanting over the newly formed riff, and with this the very essence of (Dolch) is born.
I & II contains the first two demos from this fascinating project. What I find curious though is that the music found within these forty minutes is a sound that is more developed than many bands that have multiple full length albums under their banner. This slow, reverb fueled music treads the line of music and ambient all throughout both of these demo albums.
The guitars often will not even register to my ears as guitars, but rather an element to drive the music's atmosphere forward. Take the song Hlob for instance. The guitars, while present, offer more of an unchanging backing sound than any sort of structure. There is a constant distorted noise floor that the song exhibits that never truly evolve from that. Rather the song is driven by the ghostly vocal track and some oddly placed percussion. Combined with the obscure production the song comes across as something we may hear out of a radio in a horror movie. It's quite the compelling sound, and one I have not heard much of in my musical journey.
There are of course more structured songs. Songs where the riffs are more defined, where the melodies have stronger hooks - but they are not the dominant force here. Rather the band will oscillate between these two styles and sometimes thrown in another curve ball for the listener.
Towards the end of II, the band gives us Herz which drops all the distortion, nearly all the reverb, and gives us a minimalist track that is clear as day. After going through thirty five minutes of distortion fueled fuzziness this threw me for a loop the first time I heard it.
I & II are a promising start to a fascinating project. I don't have anything else in my collection that sounds quite like this, and for that alone this will remain a curiosity. The fact that these demos are excellent is a nice byproduct. I will continue to see what the minds behind (Dolch) will release in the future, as their start is certainly one to take note of.
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