02082011

A Storm Of Light - As The Valley Of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade (2011)

(atmospheric sludge metal / post-metal)

Missing slams down as the first track of the album and already describes the most of what the album has to offer. Drums like hammerfalls on an anvil, vocals brushed with rust and wavering, sludgy riffs that penetrate the sides of clean execution and granular mass of sounds without ever reaching the end of either side. The featuring vocals and various artists do not stick out from the mass but one can be lead into the thought that they were never meant to.

As The Valley Of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade is the third full-length album from the Brooklyn-based post-metal group, A Storm Of Light. The band has improved with every album and ironically, their best work up to day is a split album with Nadja - Primitive North was the rising tide that carried the band further. The long album title of the latest indicates that the band is clearly ready for defining their own sound and with Josh Graham of Red Sparowes as the frontman the direction towards attention in the post-metal section is more than crystalized.

Yet, the album seems to have come out as a tangled mess of everything. As if there was no decision on whether to focus on the lyrics, the album features long instrumental sections of, I admit, well-executed drumming and slow, mashed guitar riffs as well as forward-ramming vocals with lyrical complexity in them. Black Wolves leaves us a lyrical code to decipher with its metaphorical delivery but musically it doesn't strike one as anything staggering.

Dawn burns through the trees
Sheltered you hide
A soulless Babylon preached fear
And our guns weep poison

Majority of the songs would generally be better off without the vocals seeing as how the instrumental aspect of the album is only a little flawed. Wretched Valley is left as a cult of ruins because of non-necessary vocals, even though Leave No Wounds is rightfully supported by them.

By carving out the slight repetition from the album, adding some ardor into the vocals and lengthening the instrumental parts, A Storm Of Light has all the qualities of becoming a large contender on the battlefield of post-metal.

.bludgeoned by our own hand.