Review Summary: The 'Dark Souls' of Symphonic Ambient Post-Metal Skramz (yes, that's a thing now)
Before I mislead you,
Ode and Elegy by Ode and Elegy is
not a third-person action role-playing game. Nor, for completeness, is it notably challenging. Nay, the explanation is somewhat simpler (
dumber): twas two moons past, having been beaten to a pulp by the Nameless King for what felt like the 100th time, that I hit play for the first time on this 55-minute one-song monolith. Instantaneously, incongruously, inconsolably:
it struck me. Whether it was the backdrop of my incessant failure or the track's particular, peculiar alignment of musical notes, I can’t be certain. Nonetheless, my conclusion was clear:
heck, this shit do be sounding better than the storm lord's own damn boss music.
Contrived and clichéd and clickbaity that title may be, but there are comparisons to be drawn. Both Miyazaki’s three-part masterpiece and this humble slice of riffs do, in fact,
slap. The latter’s hulking, singular composition has a grace and gravitas that is hard to place. It’s
empty, but
big. Suspenseful, trudging and reserved are its movements, primal choral arrangements and bashful strings budding and blooming and
bursting at a moment's notice, only to disappear off a
fucking cliff in a heartbeat. It’s unexplored and shrouded, lore-laden and untold, gleaming and dystopian:
empty and
big. And then, naturally, the big beat drops and there’s guitars and there’s drums and there’s screaming and more screaming and more screaming and
more screaming and it’s loud and it’s vibrant and it’s epic and all of a sudden
very-not-empty and
very-yes-big.
That happens quite a few times.
I’ve always hated
cinematic as a descriptor for music - yeah, idk why either - but
this is it: music that’s more an actual physical place in which to reside than it is a series of sound-waves. The locale of this adventure is
hollow-weighty and
bold-somber and
crisp-resolute and genuinely,
genuinely lived-in: like something meaningful happened years ago and you’re some useless
feckless onlooker, left there to gawk at the broken pieces (Dark Souls, anyone?). Yes: occasionally, sometimes, it can get a bit boring. The
nothingnessness left between the
epicnessnessness is spacious - very spacious, actually - but, honestly, the journey is half the fun. Suspense and subtlety are the ambitions of
Ode and Elegy, which (aside from the occasional, uncontrollable,
glorious cacophony) it does a rather damn good job of meeting.
After what felt like (
and probably was) my 200th attempt, I finally thrust my unnecessarily large sword up big-skelly-boi’s keister and quelled the raging storm.
Ode and Elegy was still booming on, so I listened for a while. It felt
good.
