A Minor Forests’
Inindependence is one creepy listen, it’s easy to make comparisons between this and Slint’s influential post-rock album
Spiderland. Both albums boast dark, eerie atmospheres while relying on skeletal guitar lines and slow yet epic climaxes. Vocals are occasionally featured, Erik Hoversten’s calm, melancholy voice is buried under the clanky guitar grooves and driving rhythm section.
Inindependence is no
Spiderland but to keep you interested I’ll say that if you like the former then you’ll probably enjoy this.
Throughout the fifty-five minutes of
Inindependence you’re greeted with sparse musicianship and an extremely hushed, guitar driven sound. All of the songs rely on valiant climaxes to keep the listener interested, either that or fearless rages of distorted noise.
Look at that Car, it’s Full of Balloons slowly creeps up on you with it’s rumbling bassline and shadowy guitar hooks. Towards the end of the song the quarter explode and create a delicate piece of post-rock that Slint would be proud of.
Discoier, the albums closing number features thin piano chords over scarce guitar noises creating an extremely nightmarish, romantic, and jazzy sound. These two tracks are the clear highlights of the album and some of the better post-rock that I’ve heard coming from the late 90's.
While A Minor Forest are able to create some breathtakingly ghoulish sounding songs they can also be quite the bore.
The Smell of Hot is an eighteen minute instrumental that doesn’t have any interesting climax or guitar playing. Musically the track contains a frightening sort of atmosphere but it’s very difficult to listen to a song that lasts eighteen minutes without going through any engaging phases. The main problem with
Inindependence is its’ lack of variation, it gets intensely grating listening to music for fifty-five minutes when you spend half of it anticipating a climax or a distorted rock out session.
Although
Inindependence isn’t an original or unique album I’d still recommend it for those of you interested in post/math-rock. Taking influences from Slint, Sebadoh, and Big Black A Minor Forest create an album that captures a creepy, doomful sound that is captured through dreary guitars and minimal bass rumbling. Yes,
Inindependence has its boring spells and yes, it isn’t very original but when it’s good it’s untouchable.
