Review Summary: Remember when these guys used to be heavy?
I guess it's force of habit, but whenever I hear the name Ancestors I think of progged out stoner doom, emphasis on the latter. Maybe it's just because after seeing them open for Saint Vitus and remembering that the sounds that came out of their amps were thicker than the lead walls of a fallout shelter, if lead walls were ever tie died by a rag tag team of hippie burnouts as part of some ritual of 60's psychedelia. On Ancestors' latest release
Invisible White that heaviness is missing. It seems as though their tour van got lost somewhere in Canterbury in the early 70's because the end result sounds like something that Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt would name drop in a print interview. After some getting used to though,
Invisible White slowly begins to unfold and reveal its secrets. Where previous Ancestors albums combined crunchy 'verbed out guitars with tempos set to the speed of bong rips, here the keyboards are the star of the show. Layers upon layers of vintage tones drone away in what can only be described as flashback induced lullaby, steadily wooing you into an uneasy calm. It is not until the album's final track, the near fifteen minute long “Epilogue”, where Ancestors start to remind us of their past self. Although not as jarring as their earlier offerings, “Epilogue” sounds like a David Gilmour wet dream with its guitar work that pulls directly from every 70's Pink Floyd dirge, along with its use of electric organs and melotrons to further trick your mind that if you opened up the liner notes you'd find the legendary Floyd axeman's name listed among the band mates.
It's hard to rank an album like
Invisible White in black and white terms among Ancestors discography because, truth be told, it's a rather impressive piece of progressive rock. With that said, it does lack anything that even comes close to the pure grit and power that made so many fall in love with tracks like “Ambrose Law” and “Neptune With Fire” in the first place, which is a hard thing to overlook.
