Ancestral: Avowal
A hazy forest swallowed in fog and rain, chains of dreary isolation tugging at your sleeve as the silent indulgence of an emotional cataract collapses on top of you. Tears tugging at your eyes, the vast forest a glimpse of beauty and joy, a facade of happiness to cower behind. Ancestral is your overwhelming sense of relief as you begin to realize why you’re here. Ancestral is the sound of desolate roads and wrong turns, misguiding your dreams and deceiving your intuition, a shattering and mending of the silent transition between reality and illusions. Avowal, Ancestrals second album, is a defiant enigma that penetrates its listener on a personal basis. This is an album of subtle simplicity, an album that meekly wanders around the forest softly whispering its elegy to whomever chooses to listen. It doesn’t seek restitution or attention or glory. It’s simply there, a humble catharsis trotting aimlessly along.
Avowal is more than a simple depressive black metal release. Yes, it does contain all of your essential ingredients, it contains your mournful riffing and desolate vocals, the gloomy atmosphere and depressive aesthetics dragging your mind into a pool of hatred and loneliness. The entire album feels so subtle, so alone and deprived of importance or hope. It feels like I’m standing in a desert, dehydrated and alone, staring up at the dark rain clouds as they slowly float by. The question is there, but the answer is irrelevant. Asking will only defeat the purpose, the relentless pounding of your undeniable arrogance is torn out and beaten ruthlessly. This is an album that questions who we are in the most subtle ways possible. A painting hanging in our living rooms, the bleak colors of our lives strewn and tossed about a canvas for you to reflect upon, to dream upon, cry upon. Ugliness and pain showcased in the broom closet of our minds, simply procured to peak our individual curiosity. I can’t begin to put into words the amount of emotion laced into my thoughts as I began to listen to this. The albums bleeding melodies encapsulated my mind, comforting my faults and caressing my emptiness in the most humble of ways. The album is depressing in nature, but only when it’s truly embraced can it cause unbearable amounts of self-reflective tragedy and pain. Your mental playground ripped to pieces, a wastebasket of crumpled dreams and shredded thoughts glazed over by a hooded figure slowly wandering off.
The production is very good for a self release, yet is below studio quality for obvious reasons. Music like this does not require top notch production and should not be subject to it. The cold, distant aura evoked by this is absolutely perfect in every way. The droning guitars and plodding drums compliment the pessimistic and haunting vocals as they entwine together in a collage of contempt and daunting shadows. Everything meshes together eloquently and concisely, the individual instruments colliding flawlessly like old friends reuniting. The music heavily relies on atmosphere and succeeds in every aspect, not one moment wasted on useless silence or stale melodies. As fruitful as it all may seem, the flawless nature seems to be its one glaring flaw. The music itself doesn’t contain anything new or innovative, rather taking average black metal and adding a structureless and personal basis to the album. All three tracks were created to be a soundtrack for thought, the railroads of our emotional trains and highways of our indecisive minds. A flat, clean mirror placed before your face, delicately requesting that you take a look deeper. You lose yourself in your own eyes, lose your train of thought to the derailment of Avowal, lose your breath to the drowning decadence of time.
Avowal is an extremely personal album, a soundtrack to the constant waves of long forgotten memories and hidden thoughts obscured by the trials of life. It doesn’t thrust itself on the listener, it doesn’t force us to reexamine our lives or those around us, it simply slips by unnoticed. It’s like witnessing something beautiful that simply astounds you, something that falls from the sky without reason or cause. The rising sun in the dawn sky, shadowy figures of passing birds dot the skyline with their graceful movement and timeless sense of prosperity. The reuniting of a lost child and his mother, the seamless transition between stressful worry and overwhelming joy reflecting the dreamless hope of an everlasting love. The snapshots of life we are presented with to cherish, the moments of time we wish we could rewind to replay in the distant corners of our minds. This is the soundtrack to your deepest feelings of solitude and joy, your deepest feelings of worthlessness and pride that sustain themselves just above your conscious. Hiding away from ever being seen, this album brings them to light. A lingering expression of cloned sentiments mirrored for you to view, an empty canvas awaiting your strokes of progression and self mutilation. The true beauty of your absence glaring back through the shattered realm of a schizophrenic mind. The true beauty of your life ending one moment at a time.
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