Zilverhill :: Laodoicean (Adept Sound/Blind Shouter)

A sacral-industrial passage suggests some creepy cathedral attached to a munitions factory. In the end, something wounded limps away, dragging its heavy tail in the dirt.

Zilverhill 'Laodoicean'
Zilverhill ‘Laodoicean’

[Release page] Although heard as a single flow, the duo of Tim Bales and Paul Carr have created a ten-track album characterized as documenting “a shared indifference towards the causes of ignorance which lead us into the path of pain and the inability of our ingrained immaturity as a species to overcome such obstacles.” Mankind’s thorny obtuseness, parochial self-satisfaction and stunted spiritual evolution? The title of the album confuses me—are Zilverhill referencing ancient Greece or Asia Minor? Are they referencing one of Paul’s apocryphal epistles, in which the locals are accused of being blasé, blowing neither hot nor cold? The track titles—”Perfectibilist,” “Munder Asset,” “Coticule”—shed no light on the context.

Backstory notwithstanding, Laodoicean is accomplished dark ambient, or maybe the term should be “fantasy dark ambient,” something to scare children with, like Grimm’s fairy tales. Lost in the dark woods, we enter into the dragon’s lair. He’s deep in his grotto and his growls echo among the stalactites long before we are confronted with the roaring beast. Having passed shaken but unscathed, an eerie, cavernous calm descends, cold comfort in clammy air which carries voices, but from where? A sacral-industrial passage suggests some creepy cathedral attached to a munitions factory. In the end, something wounded limps away, dragging its heavy tail in the dirt.

Laodoicean is available on Adept Sound/Blind Shouter. [Release page]