Kraken Duumvirate "The Stars Below, The Sea Above" Review

    Play this shit outside your house on Halloween and entreat your neighbors to the vast existential despair of the C O S M O S

    Sometimes I forget that bands are people, with thoughts and feelings and strange ideas about the world I can't reconcile with my own thoughts. I can read credits on any given album and have them just be names or aliases without context or meaning. I'm not a socialite, nor particularly empathic. And it's funny the things that will snap my brain into realizing people making music can think outside of filling my ears with noise. Like how a celestially horrific release like Kraken Duumvirate's The Stars Below, The Sea Above was released so close to Halloween, in the season of cold rain and wind and impending dread. Very near to the months of seasonal affect. Driving thru the drizzling cold wetness to get out in my tree stand this morning I was listening to this album and couldn't help but feel Kraken Duumvirate had invaded my psyche and were performing the soundtrack for this gloomy, numb pre-dawn ritual. I write this intro sitting in the freezing rain waiting for any sign of life to wander out, some comfort in knowing I'm not alone.

    There isn't any. 

    So I find it funny to believe that part-time Finnish doom ascendants Kraken Duumvirate were cognizant of what season they were releasing their cold and despondent new album. "When should we release our new album, guys? In the bleakness of October, on the eve of Halloween? How fitting. Praise be to Nyarlathotep!"

    The initial track, "Star-Spawn", begins things rather quickly for what is ostensibly an album that crawls thru its runtime. No time is wasted in bringing all instrumentation to the forefront. Predominating the sonic landscape of the record is a delay-ridden clean guitar producing repeating melodies whose echoes take up a vast amount of negative space. The melody is underlied by a chunky distorted guitar, typical of doom metal, holding down three or four power chord progressions for long intervals. Percussion is minimal, being occupied mostly by open hi-hats and reverberating snares on a (ridiculously slow) back beat. Finally, the vocals are interesting, I think, insofar as they are whispered growls that have been heavily processed to sound like prophetic uttering from the nearest sentient neutron star. With this arrangement, Kraken Duumvirate set about creating an atmosphere I'm hesitant to call metal at all. It feels more like aggressive post rock. Or like Schammasch decided they were going to cover all the clean parts of ISIS's Oceanic, only 20% slower.

    I can't say I'm the hugest fan of the style, but I think the atmosphere is potent. As I've said, this album absolutely crawls thru its length. I'd be surprised if you told me there were more than twelve unique 'riffs' on the album, as most songs, aside from the Roman numeral interludes, are broken into two distinct sections. These sections mostly comprise small variations on a larger theme or riff. This gives the entire album the feeling of being like a soundtrack. I'd almost say tracks like "I" and "The Temple" would be home scoring Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver or Planescape: Torment. Everything has this otherworldly feeling about it. It's quite evocative and enjoyable in small enough doses. But as a whole experience I don't know that I have the interest or wherewithal. To my ears, there is little ebb and flow, everything feels like a build up with little payoff. That's kind of the point, though, isn't it? I'm sure that's what I would be told, but it isn't enough for me to justify sitting through the whole thing again on my own time. If I were in the right mood I might put a track or two on, or into an ambient playlist for playing Dungeons and Dragons to.

    In the end, most tracks here simply peter out rather than climax, and what I can say of one I feel I can say of all. An interesting, monolithic work that just really isn't for me. To the people it is for I'm sure it may be a breath of fresh air. For that, they may have it, and cheers to them. 

    You can listen to "The Seas Above, The Stars Below" at Kraken Duumvirate's bandcamp.

-Dalton