Review Summary: Soul draining dronebient album about eternal winter from Horror Soundscapes
It’s truly a rare occasion to find a musical project with a name so fitting, that totally represents the created music. Horror Soundscapes from Italy does exactly that.
For now, it’s an underground act (with very limited online following), enigmatic and mystical, with almost zero information provided to context the released material; still being a very fruitful one, with four published albums in 2023 alone. Adding further mysterious feeling, the author lets us know, that one of the releases was deleted from streaming platforms without any reason provided.
Today we’d be talking about Heavy Snow, the late 2022 instalment – a full-length album exploring the ambient/drone genres.
To set things straight – what Horror Soundscapes does is that one note levitating, luminous dronebient, not the slow rhythmical stuff. With minimum variations, this album delivers lifeless, spooky vibrations at extremely low paces. This is also in perfect match with the name of the release, as everything feels frozen, buried under tons of conserving snow. Tackling everything related to cold – from Dyatlov Pass to Bajkal, from UFOs embedded in Ice to Aurora Borealis, the author explores the dreadful part of severe low temperatures and the fear of succumbing to it. The restraint approach to music underlines the slowness of the cold, the existence of borderline uninhabitable conditions, and the near-death experiences.
My personal favorite is Spaceship Beneath The Ice, as it transmits the gloomiest vibe, Carpenterish style of darkness – you know, like The Thing.
Heavy Snow captures the emotion that is displayed in the artwork of the album. The last stop. The ages of ice. The snow never ends. As an album, it could be a perfect soundtrack for a videogame, or a standalone meditative listening experience.
Truly, these are the Horror Soundscapes as for the living being nothing says horror and fear as the unrelenting coldness and inevitable demise due to being frozen.
