It happened again. I dropped my guard and, for a brief moment, let myself believe that I had found THE long lost successor to Deathprod’s Morals and Dogma. ‘Alarums’ entered my eardrums boldly, unceremoniously and drew a blanket of utter despair over my spirit. A thick presence that so many dark ambient artists strive to achieve. It didn’t need much: two constantly repeated chords, frozen in time and space, overpowering whatever came into their way. They echoed cruelly in the darkness, unaware of a world outside their own. But it took me a long time, too long, to figure out the true price of their unparalleled serenity: the monster emanating these sounds was long gone, dead and forgotten to the world. I was experiencing the unmoving reality of nothingness, of death and emptiness. We can only guess how long the thick, droning silence has been traveling to reach our world; an hour? A year? Decades? How much would be convenient enough for us to believe? We will never know; somehow I doubt that we even want to know. Then ‘Pan Novak’ came along, rescued me from this reality and brought me back headfirst into our own. For a while I was blinded but then I saw the bitter truth; it wasn’t meant to be after all. ‘Pan Novak’ took me on a journey through lush, meditative ambience, but it failed to take me places that I hadn’t been to before. And before I knew it, I was lost; stuck somewhere between silent contemplation and total disinterest. I enjoyed his company while it lasted but his presence left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth, considering the virtues of his predecessor.
Alarums is not a classic, but after hearing its phenomenal opener I don’t want to wake up in the morning thinking it could never be. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.
