Review Summary: A curious yet underwhelming conglomeration of folk, ambient, and black metal.
So, track one. An obscure field recording-- a crowd scene of some sort-- gives way to a haphazard folk guitar placidly strumming away at chords which can be most accurately described as 'pleasant enough.' An off-kilter melody enters after two minutes of this insouciance, succeeding in dismantling the meagre grocery store/auction in New Jersey atmosphere-- whether that is a good or bad thing will depend on your fondness for groceries and/or auctions. Then, suddenly, the strumming dies down, and a reverb-laden clean guitar enters the fore. After
that disappears without fanfare, the black metal begins... sort of. The music is lo-fi, with crunchy, static-ridden chords and indecipherable vocals but, curiously, there is no drumming. Agalloch meets Art Garfunkel in this baffling concoction.
The record's not as dire as that scathing paragraph would have it sound, though.
Fire of the Spirit gets better as it goes on-- somewhat. Taken as an ambient/noise release, the record is effective in producing a melancholic, autumnal atmosphere, the likes of which should be familiar to black metal fans. The formless, free-flowing song structures are intriguing; the playing is on occasion nice (the acoustic guitar of "Laying Out the Fleece," the ambient mid-section of "Tongues of Knowledge").
There are myriad issues, though. The mix is one. Yes, this is a deliberately lo-fi album, but nonetheless the mix requires address. Everything is drowned by the guitar, especially the drums; they are essentially inaudible save the cymbals, which means they are more an annoyance than anything. The vocals fall victim to the gruesome mix, too. It's a shame-- on the occasions they are audible, or when one applies the appropriate baroscopic methodology, they are intriguing. A third issue is the voice samples. They are more distracting than essential. Indeed, they are eclectic and out-of-place and break the nocturnal forest vibe the record takes such pains to create (see the Southern-accented monologue which opens "Anointing Oil"). Lastly, though the playing is sometimes nice, it's sometimes amateurish, too (closer "A Glass Dalia").
Fire of the Spirit, then, is a peculiar and unorthodox record, not entirely ineffective, but moreso that than that trait's more desirable opposite. Skip the skippable voice samples, and ignore the ones embedded beneath the instrumentals, and it's suited to lonely walks through autumnal forests, I suppose-- or perhaps even walks with company. However, given that this is a one-man project (Paul Ravenwood, responsible for all instruments, mixing, and mastering) I suspect it's designed with the lone traveler in mind. I suggest that there are more worthwhile journeys for such travelers to embark upon.
