Friday Music Review: Echtra’s Sky Burial (2013)

 

First, a word on Sky Burial.  There are two major world religions that have practiced this: Zoroastrianism and Buddhism.  It is only practiced currently by Buddhism in Tibet and is known as jhator, or the giving of alms to the birds.  Its environmental impetus is simple to understand – the culture does not have enough room to bury their all their dead (meaning that this and cremation are the two most common ways to handle the dead) and to keep vultures away from population centers.  Its cultural ramifications are far more broad.  Obviously, it serves  as a means to honor the dead, whose living shells are now empty, represents impermanence, and is a final act of giving to other living animals.

Echtra, whose name comes from Irish myth regarding a Hero’s Journey in the Otherworld, is a Cascadian Black/Folk Metal band from Olympia, Washington.  Introduced via Temple of Torturous as a drone focused band, I was certain that I was absolutely terrified by this album (as I’m not a massive drone fan).  However, the teasing materials promised a sonic exploration of the dissolution of our mortal coil and the impermanence of our existence.  Sky Burial is a two part album, consisting of two 23 minute length songs.  It is the first release of this band’s Passage Cycle and seems the moments after death and the initial moments of the transformation of consciousness.

The album opens with a sense of falling before finding a plaintive, pensive tone in its acoustic guitar.  This sound repeats and persists in fragility even when the scathing cold droning electric guitars sweep in.  Equal parts reflective and mysterious and obvious and demonstrative, this evokes a curious dissonance of warmth and cold in their sound; a definite explication that the appointed hour has come and gone, yet that there is hope therein found.  I write obviously about the first song here because I greatly enjoyed this composition’s first 11 minutes most of all.  It really drives home those emotions that Echtra seems to be trying to find.

The keyboard adds a further, nebulous layer of sound that aids in the creation of solemnity on the album.  The use of the deep, nearly throat singing style vocals crafts this into a hymn.  All things here feel restrained wisely and there seems to be no missteps in the composition of the album and its intended point.  It is cold and inevitable, yet warmth and approachable.  It does not push death as something to be feared, but rather something that one must transcend.

Echtra’s efforts are reminiscent of Agalloch’s; however, unlike a number of the other bands whose efforts mirror this style, Echtra gets it.  Sky Burial is a wonderful exploration of the intended themes and offers the listener a chance to enjoy and consider the impermanence of life and the inevitability of death.  At 46 minutes, it is not a lengthy listen and is wonderful chamber music, whose ambience and quality is one of the best I’ve heard this year.

 

 

Apocalyptic of the Day: Impending Releases for the Current Year in Music…

Notification came through the interwebs regarding the first releases from Temple of Tortuous Records, a Swedish Indie Record label that has released such bands as Melancholia Ecstatica and Kolp (Bandcamp).  Both albums are due out on March 31st, 2013.

First up, we have Echtra, a band from Olympia, Washington, that focuses on the drone aspects of the sort of Cascadian Black Metal scene.  Their album, Sky Burial, is the first entry of the Passage Cycle that focuses on a very delineated theme: “an exploration of the dissolution of our mortal coil” through a composition that is described as poetic in nature.  While drone is not typically one of my favorite sounds, I can appreciate a band naming themselves after a being of Irish Folklore and then backing it up by the examination of a nihilistic theme in which one becomes more human by the realization of their own limitation of time.  Below is the album art that depicts in graphic detail sky burial and the album teaser:

Passage Cycle I: Sky Burial Album Teaser:

And, their previous album’s stream:

Look for the album to be presented as a CD/DVD album housed in a well-crafted digifile, with silver print, debossing on textured black carton, in combination with a 2-sided postcard as well.

ToT also is offering Total Negation’s “Zur späten Stunde | Zeiträume.”  Described as a conceptual project of two interlinked EP length releases, Total Negation is slated to offer a mixture of psychedelic krautrock and black metal in which Zur späten Stunde offers examination of the nightly trip of a resting body and mind, focusing on the delirious moments before sleep. “Zeiträume” offers the use of instruments not familiar to metal and focuses on the “visions of our dreams and how they blur into reality.”  Total Negation’s sound is more what I look for as far as my metal selections, as Wiedergaenger, the band’s lone musician, seeks to blur and transcend the genre label entirely.

Here’s a youtube video of Total Negation’s Consumed:

The album is due out on March 31, 2013 as well and  will be presented in a 6pp digifile with 12pp booklet, all printed on high quality textured rough paper stock.

We wish both bands well and hope that both achieve their aims, looking forward to offering reviews of both albums in the ensuing months.