Review Summary: Black Metal for bedtime
Waterfall. Beach. Thunder. Heartbeat. Invariably, recordings of such comforting sounds can be purchased at carefully perfumed stores that should stick to selling throw pillows and tomato peelers rather than these sonic aberrations. I mean, are there really people out there who can’t fall asleep to Merzbow? And if there are, should they be allowed that option? But if we must offer soothing alternatives for sedation and stress relief, Velvet Cacoon have one more choice to add to the display: black metal.
VC are careful to lead us past familiar landmarks on our way toward the shifting tides of their overlapping chords. The record opens with a menacing march through all the dank shadows a good depressive BM album should, but beyond that, put away your bullet belt and spiked arm bands and find a 30-minute video of your favorite Nordic landscape. Here, there are no frost trolls, no wendigo, not even a wolf cub. Just pristine snow gliding on a gentle (but frigid) breeze from one drift to the next. Gnarled trees sheathed in ice sway mildly, sometimes spilling twinkling shards into the soft powder below. High, unbroken clouds whiten the sky and rarely seem to move. VC let every distorted note and chord bleed into the next, eschewing almost all percussion and vocals to achieve their winter calm.
This is metal for relaxation, and depending on your patience for that sort of thing, VC do it really well. Maybe soon some progressive bath product store will realize how nicely this fits between Rainforest and Summer Night.
