A temperamental foray into experimental drone, Brian Daniloski of Baltimore, Maryland’s Meatjack makes his solo debut with his one-man musical discomfort system, Darsombra. For being such a relatively abbreviated album for the genre, what ‘Ecdysis’ lacks in duration (thankfully), it more than makes up for with gordian, enigmatic musical segmentation. Some of it is very interesting, but most of it is chancy, existing alone in it’s own little world of noise, reverb, and dismissal of anything resembling conventional songwriting.

Even with it’s brief playing time, ‘Ecdysis’ is still quite a little mindfuck of an album. I could sit here and talk about atmosphere, ambiance, blah, blah, blah, for however long this takes, and still not really be able to describe accurately just what takes place on ‘Ecdysis’. ‘Thinning The Herd’ lies submerged in a sea of cavernous melodies, and speaker-rattling tonality, bringing to mind some of the mellow moments of Gojira’s ‘From Mars To Sirius’. On ‘The Place Where There Is No Darkness’, Brian produces nothing but drawn-out cinematic backround music, gleaming with barely restrained feedback, and a consistent, bothersome hum, with what sounds like various gongs being struck at one point.

On track 3, ‘My House’ Brian finally divulges us in the closest thing to structured music to be heard up to this point on the disc. It’s quite a harsh blow however, as blaring guitars unleash an unruly segue leading into a ploddingly slow, monolithic doom riff, as well as the first semblance of a thought-out vocal arrangement which sounds a lot like Indian chanting. The tune has a very Old West sort of whiskey inebriated crawl to it, and is one of the most enjoyable moments on the album.

As mentioned, there is an almost soundtrack sort of vibe not unlike that found in many very disturbing horror movies (think of the pensively horrific moments of ‘Night Of The Living Dead’, or Fulci’s ‘Zombie’). ‘Drag The Carcass’ lunges headlong into this territory, accompanied by more ponderous riffing, cosmic sound effects, and a truly bizarre sample of a preacher singing his sermon. After full acknowledgement of the contrast, it makes for an interesting bit of poetic idiosyncrasy.

‘Swelter’ does just that, a moaning, wailing instrumental with more deliriously placed twists and turns in it than Robert Trujillo’s pigtails, leading into the harrowing closer ‘Dies Irae’, which sounds like what a paralyzed man laying fallen in a leaking boat in the middle of the ocean might feel. There’s a disconnection, a sort of unreal panic, and within that an underlying, yet still overwhelming acerbity. This might not be so obviously aggressive, but it is still a morose, unkind piece of work that leaves a foreboding and menacing aftertaste.

Not an album for the unadventurous, ‘Ecdysis’ is a lofty, occasionally teeth-grinding exercise in sonic unease. This is an album which takes pleasure in disorienting it’s listeners, without offending them by trying to appear more ingenious than it really is by swaddling itself in overdone ambient self-indulgence. With an aura of sincerity, and a few ounces of grit, Darsombra is a stark, craggy fabrication that will leave fans of the genre (and probably only fans of the genre, hence the conservative score) with hours of repeated new discoveries.

This entry was posted by Dekompoze on Tuesday, 4th April, 2006 at 13:24 and is filed under Reviews, Darsombra. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response below. You may view a   printable version of this page. You may download this page in   PDF format.