Review Summary: More immersion from dark Finnish drone/doom dabblers.
I'm no expert on the sub-genre, but my understanding of bands who dabble closely with the confined spaces of drone doom often have two options: To sound like a fully-fledged band of musicians, or to construct a soundtrack to the most warped, vengeful nightmares you can think of, slowly rotting away the ambiance and zombie-like groans until there's nothing left. Finland's Dark Buddha Rising fall into the former category, even if they are in their third phase thanks to a much-needed line-up shift. Replacing the guitar/vocals is V. Vatanen and his new cohort, J. Saarivuori on keyboard duties, and already you can tell the duo's influence on the sound of latest album
Inversum, which is described as more of an "initiation process" than a welcoming to new band members.
Inversum is an album divided into two: "E S O" and "E X O", both songs completely representative of the multi-layered dynamics which often haunts the best bands of the drone doom sub-genre. Whilst both songs are similar in their delivery and objective, they also have distinctive musical devices to spread out the range of musicianship across 47 minutes. "E S O" dabbles in ambiance and swirling keyboard passages to increase the possible paranoia of the listener, proving a harrowing experience for the drone fans from the very start. Indeed, the vocal delivery is mostly washed away by the overbearing heaviness and crunch of the production, and for this reason the instrumentation feels all the more prominent and controlling. That said, if in full concentration, you can make out the hypnotic vocal effects which segue into the soundscape most of the time rather than interrupt it. Basically, what we hear is a very immersive and fluent display of instrumental gusto, despite the slow build-up. "E X O" has its foot firmly planted in screaming vocal territory and mesmerisingly crushing riff work, despite the slight omission of its predecessor's fluency. Whilst "E S O" has its moments of immediate heaviness and displays them very well however, "E X O" makes this instrumental aspect all the more prominent and outstanding to the listener. It also relies solely on the pained, sometimes irritable vocal panic which, when listened to without any background distractions, proves fully suitable thanks to the input of new member V. Vatanen. Both songs have a clearly defined direction to which they need to get, and in the end, the complete runtime of 47 minutes seems gratefully fluent rather than jagged or choppy.
With
Inversum comes a new stage for Dark Buddha Rising. The line-up change will most likely leave the band's ardent fan-base questioning the future of Dark Buddha Rising, but this album will also invite newcomers into the void for a good long slog of darkness and mesmeric control. The album's two songs prove to be as qualitative and tense as each other, but what really goes on display here is the instrumental performance and how it is structured to provide effective delivery to its (un)willing audience. No better than the rest of Dark Buddha Rising's discography, but surely as good a starting point as any other record from the band.
