As always with New Risen Throne, this album is massive, cathedralic, orchestral, sonically transportive, with hints of doom-laden epicness. Recommended for fans of deep ambient music with a cinematic, moody-esque, dystopian edge. Fans of Lustmord, Svartsinn, Phaenon, Dodmaskin, Psychonaut, Aeoga… won’t be disconcerted.
Menacing atmospheric timbres
Italian indie label Eighth Tower (headed by sound artist Raffaele Pezzella, alias Sonologyst) is one groundbreaking publishing entity in the world of slow-paced, bleak isolationist music and post-industrial experimentalism. I’ve always been fond of their thematic collective albums about dark vaults of imagination in popular culture (from cinema to literature). When this new album was announced, I was curious to get into it and discover what the veteran Italian subsonic dark ambient project New Risen Throne (alias Gabriel Panci) had to offer. I’ve been actively following this project since their first classics on Cyclic Law and Cold Meat Industry. Maybe I’m wrong, but except for appearances at live festivals, the project has been on standby for years before a bright and powerful return. It seems that since last year, New Risen Throne has been more productive than ever before.
Due to the amount of musical material released recently, it is difficult to keep up with everything. Among other things, I can note the tremendous and astonishing album in collaboration with Phragments, published by Winter-Light. This year New Risen Throne also offered one brand new track for Eighth Tower regarding the collective album Music for Ancient Catacombs (this gloomy, atmospheric, and wistful ambient anthology welcomed a handful of veterans from the scene, such as Kammarheit and Nerthus, among other familiar names taken from Eighth Tower‘s back catalog). I imagine that the idea of a release published by the label was already on the way.
Spacious-abstract leanings and ominous, dusky atmospherics ::
I was really astonished and amazed by older New Risen Throne such as Crossing the Withered Regions (…) for their virtuosic and soundtracky component made of burgeoning bass frequencies, menacing atmospheric timbres, but also submerged by an effective, melodious dark tendency. This album delivers a slightly different musical trip with more spacious-abstract leanings and ominous, dusky atmospherics. The occult, magical, and blissful energy of the past album is still here to satisfy our need for sensorial escapism. Some ritualistic rhythms and primordial resonating voices also come to the mix, as in the grandiose and tellurian self-titled track. Sound artist Gabriel Panci is accompanied by guest artist Gianluca Becuzzi (another notorious artistic personality of the uncompromising dark experimental scene from the Italian underground).
As always with New Risen Throne, this album is massive, cathedralic, orchestral, sonically transportive, with hints of doom-laden epicness. Recommended for fans of deep ambient music with a cinematic, moody-esque, dystopian edge. Fans of Lustmord, Svartsinn, Phaenon, Dodmaskin, Psychonaut, Aeoga… won’t be disconcerted.
Of Grey Grounds is available on Eighth Tower. [Bandcamp]
