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I
don’t know why is it that as I listen to The
Coronation I think of the movie Alien. Funny thing
is, I’ve never seen Alien. The closer I ever got to that
movie was in a Universal Studios ride when I was about
15. It was one of those slow rides that don't really
provide any thrills. Alien actually peeked from the
ceiling and dropped some gooey substance on me. I was
pissed. Anyway, it must be that The Coronation
makes me think of space. And not in like a Carl Sagan sky glazing
way. More in like 'bad shit is getting brewed up there
and we are going to get fucked because of it' way.
The
Coronation doesn’t really sound earthly. It makes me
think of the apocalypses as taking place from the sky
down. It makes me think of space ship shooting lasers
and blowing out our cities into crumbles and our lives
into memory. As the press clips reads, The Coronation
is a ‘soundtrack for the slow collapse of modern life
and culture’. It turns out I wasn’t that far off.
Most people may
know Laudanum from their split with Stormcrow, which came out earlier in the
year. Now, the idea is the same. It’s just that this time
around the trip is
even more nightmarish in lieu of the recording being about
twenty-five minutes longer. The vocals are handled by all, but a
lot of the weight seems to rest on drummer Becky Hawk’s
shoulders. Especially during the first three tracks there is a
big emphasis on a female ghostly operatic, especially during “In Obscura” where the spirits seem willing to haunt. The high
screeches of “Wooden Horse” could come courtesy of Nathan
Misterek, who was part of the excellent Graves at Sea and who here
provides the contrast to the weighed down sound of this quartet.
There is also that guttural dark that could also come from our
dreadlocked friend. His bark is bestial, his bite,
excruciatingly painful.
Per the music
of Laudanum though, we must dwell on space and keep patience to
our side if we are to enjoy the nightmare. The pace is iceberg
slow. The mood is negative. The aura is gloomy. Our fate seems
sealed with a slow expanding atomic bomb. The songs move in one
direction. There is a lot, but only if we realize that it all
comes wrapped in fog. The Coronation is all one piece instead of
a collection of loosely tied songs. Heaviness comes through the
strings only on occasions. The album’s major density is foreign,
ambient passages, otherworldly noises that seem to be caused by
the everyday goings of planets and metal. The album is heavy on
atmospherics. Hawk is said to be in charge of ‘subsonic
transmissions’ and judging by how loaded these songs come, she
must be a busy lady. Guitarist Judd Hawk is said to add
‘ambient texture and documentation’. Whatever the latter
means, the dude must be a busy man too.
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