Earth – Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II (Southern Lord Records)
With the exception of the aesthetic one-eighty that Earth took five or six years ago that shifted their music from monolithic drone metal to a more low-key approach invoking all manner of Americana and Old West imagery, the band's output has rarely offered many immediately appreciable surprises. However, while it may be easy to make the mistake of assuming that theirs is a static approach, each successive release has been characterized by subtle variations in a sound not often characterized by subtlety (the oppressive guitar drone of their early material and the sturm-und-twang dirge of their more recent albums tend to ride a fairly bombastic idea almost to the point of monomania). Their newest album, however, the sequel to last year's Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light, is easily the largest jump the band has made since their shift in direction a half-decade ago. Captured to tape in the same two-week session that produced its predecessor, the album demonstrates the band's ability to sustain a mood comparable to that present on earlier albums, without relying on many of the stylistic components that had become fairly standardized in their approach.
Certain elements (or the lack thereof) immediately signify the degree of variation between the band's most recent release and its predecessors. The songs display a looseness, an amorphous linear character in which each instrument ambles alongside the other, in and out of step, pushing constantly forward but doing so with a weary determination that stands in stark contrast to the more authoritative heaviness of Earth's larger body of material. This isn't to suggest that they're indulging in some jam band excess, however – each phrase from each instrument acts like a tile in a mosaic, with every prickly guitar note and smear of cello constructing a larger atmosphere. It's not as immediately accessible as Earth's older work, but the newfound restraint practiced by the band adds a whole different dimension to their sound.
Even the titles of both the album and its concomitant songs tend to rely less on a specific set of imagery than on previous releases. Unlike the Cormac McCarthy/William Blake-derived concept of Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method or the apocalyptic biblical tone of The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull, the band's newest effort is considerably more oblique. There are acknowledgments made in the song titles to some fairly arcane sources – “Sigil Of Brass” and “The Corascene Dog” both refer to terms used in alchemy and mysticism; “Waltz (A Multiplicity Of Doors)” suggests a sort of Borgesian infinite unfolding of possibility; even the terminology of “The Rakehell” is antiquated enough to suggest a world rendered alien from our own by the passage of time. This may be the band's attempt to shed the “western” tag they've had attached to their music for some years now, with such an approach being ultimately limiting and intrinsically linked to some problematic ideas. Historically, this halcyon and largely imaginary Old West has been a realm where elements of machismo, of the conflation of violence and independence, and of imperialist impulses overlap until their conceptual edges fade fairly cohesively into each other. That Earth would want to shed this baggage is no surprise, that they've been able to succeed without fundamentally altering their general tone is perhaps no surprise either, but is definitely a testament to the band's ability to effectively exploit the fecundity of the aesthetic soil that they till.
But while the continuities between Angels... and the band's larger body of work aren't as readily apparent as its differences, there are a few defining characteristics still firmly in place. Though it's achieved through a mesh of interwoven lead patterns rather than monolithic rhythm guitar, the single-minded dedication to an atmosphere, to an overarcing mood and tone, remains firmly entrenched. The serene, almost meditative quality present in the majority of their music (even at its heaviest) is intact. Additionally, the subtle application of guest talent that the band has employed since its inception (from the vocals that Kurt Cobain provided for “Divine and Bright” to the contributions of jazz guitarist Bill Frisell on The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull) is continued on this release, with Lori Goldston (formerly of Nirvana's touring lineup) providing cello accompaniment. Her role on the album isn't quite as cut-and-dried as on its predecessor, however, with her contributions varying between extremely subtle accents and determined flurries of notes.
But this struggle between aesthetic evolution and an adherence to previously established form has been one of the only consistent defining features of Earth's output since their inception. Their albums do shift, but not much, and with a pace as glacial as their songs themselves. While the band's most recent release is their first in years in which a casual listener could immediately identify a marked change of approach, theirs is not music whose better traits are appreciated casually. This most recent album features Earth taking this fact to a logical extreme. Rather than the thick conceptual and sonic currents of the band's older albums, their newest is like an estuary in which smaller streams of thought run parallel until converging into a whole that's larger than its individual components. While it lacks some of the immediate, visceral punch of their older albums, Angels... witnesses the band pushing past whatever boundaries may have been assumed to enclose their wider body of work towards something expansive and unbeholden to the past.