Review Summary: Not quite Earth: Special Low Quality Version, but not quite a comeback either
Ever since Hex, all the way back in ’05, Earth’s blues-tinged brand of metal has been practically begging to accompany a film, as Dylan’s dirgey drones drew deeper from more expansive sources, began to conjure images of windswept mesas, Mississippi mud, wastelands dotted with isolated nomads, in short, began to feel like more of a cinematic experience and less of the inexorable liquification of the senses that had been their earlier work. And while Carlson’s music has appeared here and there on a handful of soundtracks, mostly documentaries, it wasn’t until this year that Earth was tapped to do an entire soundtrack for Even Hell Has Its Heroes, a documentary, lo and behold, about none other than drone metal forebears Earth! And really, who better to compose the soundtrack to a documentary about yourself than yourself?
But even with a sound that had so easily lent itself to visual accompaniment for so long, I was expecting very little from these titans of their genre. 2019’s Full Upon Her Burning Lips had been largely a disappointment, a meandering plod into senility that seemed to want to stumble into every pitfall laid out by the limitations of their style, all while being miserably toothless in its own right. Conquistador, Carlson’s previous solo outing with the assistance of Emma Ruth Rundle, had fared only slightly better, relying on a lighter, mellower atmosphere that still succumbed to that superindulgence in repetition of riffs that had very little justification for their interminable length. So I was, understandably, a little cynical in my initial approach to Even Hell Has Its Heroes.
Fittingly for a documentary soundtrack that attempts to encapsulate Earth’s history and sound, Carlson and Davies have found a middle ground between the lighter post-rock-blues approach of their previous album and their more atmospheric heyday, a heavier drone-blues that recalls elements from each phase of Earth’s career. And while most of the album lacks much of the weighty atmosphere of the likes of Hex, and much of the lush, heady ambience of The Bees Made Honey, the recent development is a welcome synthesis, if only in that Earth sound at least somewhat heavy again for the first time in nearly a decade. The welcome return to pure drone tracks as well harken to the heavy hand Carson played in drone metal’s inception, and are fine examples of that style in their own right. Sedate and monolithic in their passage, they drift by, impassive walls of tone and feedback and while it's nothing that Earth haven't done before, and better, it's a reminder of Earth's early mastery of the power of guitar drone.
But I can’t quite say that this retrospective on a decades spanning career has truly invigorated Earth, left them feeling inspired to new paths of exploration or even a renewed focus on their sense of craftsmanship. When I revisited some of their previous albums in preparation for this review, I was struck by how much more those albums were steeped in atmosphere, how much artistry was put into the development of each track, how much more my patience was rewarded compared to the relatively static atmosphere of what’s being offered here. It’s not bad by any means, and the fact that the return to heaviness and drone at least makes it engaging on a purely sensory level means its an improvement on Full Upon Her Burning Lips, but the renewed sense of inspiration feels woefully inadequate for a band of Earth’s caliber. Even two new versions of their classic The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull one live, one jazz, only partially live up to the glories of the original. The jazz version especially deserves mention as far and away the most atmospheric track on the album, even though I’m not sure if Carlson’s even playing on the thing. The low point is the uninspired Rocker, a basic, plodding retread of lifeless versions of the rock riffs of yesteryear, a headfirst pratfall into all of Earth’s worst tendencies. The rest of the album seems to stumble at a midpoint between these poles of evocative atmosphere and pedestrian banality; for the most part the whole thing manages to lean towards everything that once made them great, but to a degree so slight that the word “comeback” was left dying on my lips. Even the material that can be said to be good is so derivative of previous material, it's very iffy to even say whether the album can stand on its own merits.
With Even Hell Has Its Heroes, Earth have shown that they still have an ear for atmosphere and an innate knack for auditory heft. That a film about the band, its ethos and history should be the direct inspiration for what amounts to only a partial return to form is disappointing, if not totally unexpected. Regardless, a documentary about Earth, its history, Carlson’s role in the whole Cobain mythos, should be at the very least worth watching. And I’m sure nobody knows better how to score a documentary than the subjects of that documentary themselves. As a standalone work, and as a retrospective of the various phases of their career however, Even Hell Has Its Heroes is a success so slight as to nearly be marked a failure.
