Review Summary: The Angelic Process brilliantly document the aural journey of a tortured soul through the most dismal of ambient drone landscapes in “Coma Waering”.
Members:
K. Angylus - guitar, drums, vocals
M. Dragynfly - bass, vocals
The Angelic Process does not create complicated music. Listeners looking for technicality or flashy time signatures can look elsewhere. What the band strives for is to convey as much emotion as possible in the simplest of song structures. From multiple listens of “Coma Waering” it can be concluded that they succeed on all counts. “Coma Waering” stifles the listener with wave after wave of heavily distorted bass coupled with memorable chord changes and intelligent synth arrangements.
While the vocal aspects of the album play a side role, its addition in certain parts of the music enhances the bleak nature of the atmosphere. The last track “Mouvement - Shielded By Death: Suspended In Life” contains eerie whispers that shadow the bass during the starting minutes of the song while the title track features howling vocals that are buried under tons of bass and synth. The guitars are clearly the backbone of the sound, performing multiple duties like constructing massive walls of sound and keeping the background atmosphere in line with the dark, apocalyptic nature of the synth and the drumming.
The Angelic Process do not have a variety of elements which they can employ to surprise a listener and hence hold his/her interest for long. Their repertoire consists of multi layered bass-synth sandwiches, tribal drumming and the occasional vocal appearance. To induce the illusion of variety, one or two of the three aforementioned entities are withdrawn periodically from the sound and are reintroduced later to join the song or to replace another element. The majority of the album features all three elements operating together but several, critical breaks in the playtime showcase this kind of withdrawal or even simple silence.
Though the risk of this technique is huge, The Angelic Process manage to pull it of solely due to their ability to write a given bass line and then not only produce the perfect corresponding synth line but also the right drum pattern that can both exist independently of each other and can coexist together to produce truly astounding moments. In other words, any element of the song i.e. the drumming, the bass or the synth is strong enough to carry the song with only a little help from the other elements. A shining example of the aforementioned usage is the nine minute title track wherein a single drum pattern holds itself throughout the song’s length while the synth and bass make intelligent appearances and carry the song to an awesome conclusion.
The Angelic Process is a defunct band. Following “Coma Waering” Kris Angylus and Monica Dragynfly would release the phenomenal “Weighing Souls With Sand” after which Kris would undergo a hand surgery that would force him to terminate the project. He would later take his own life; an act that would ensure that The Angelic Process would never again see the light of the day. One cannot help but imagine where The Angelic Process would have been if things had turned out differently. Considering the strength of “Coma Waering” and its successor, anyone would come to the same conclusion: The Angelic Process was destined for a long and illustrious career.
Rating: 4.5/5
