(10.27.05) Combative Alignment’s first full-length CD release, after an LP and a couple of smaller vinyl releases, is the sonic ritual of …And Outside Glows The Red Dawn. A consuming ceremonial work meant to be heard as a single event, …And Outside Glows The Red Dawn hums with esoteric mysticism, pulses with subtle rites and greets the dawn with a dreamlike atmosphere of drones and hidden voices. Drums greet you at the entrance to the ceremonial chamber as spectral guides whisper in your ears and drape you with shimmering drones. Currents of sound bring the hint of lost conversations, spirit talk round tables long since turned to dust, and the diaphanous chime of bells that have turned to silver mist. Digideroos sneak into the room behind you like strange serpentine animals, sounding their hollow bellow.
The ceremony is a dream-state, a walk through spaces lit by flickers of morphic energy and filled with the reverberations of old winds and distant sesmic groans. As initiates begin to make waves of sound from hand-beaten cymbals and gongs, the room is overwhelmed with the layers of metallic noise and fustian wind. As the ritual grows (ebbing and flowing without reservation across the six parts of the record), natural sounds begin to find their way into the mix. The wind swells at the half-way mark and rain begins to drip and rush off the broad rocks of the ceremonial site. This is the nature of esoteric rituals: the world is changed during the course of their passage. As the winds begin to howl with the same wordless song as the distant priests, you begin to lose track of yourself and become one with the rain and stone and water.
…And Outside Glows The Red Dawn is both a recording of the ritual and the ritual itself. It is transformative spacial music that moves past you and moves through you, leaving you cleansed on the outside as well as the inside. It isn’t music so much as it is a sonic dimension that resonates in your head and lungs. Breathe in deep, find the drone within in, and release the wind. Such ethereal movement is what draws the sun back into the sky.
…And Outside Glows The Red Dawn is out now on Malignant Records.
