ALBUM REVIEW: A Birdsong, A Ghost – Oldest Sea

Within the first few seconds of opening track Sacred Destruction, it is immediately apparent that OLDEST SEA’s latest album is going to be absolutely crawling with atmosphere. A single note builds, twists and turns for almost a minute, before the ethereal howling of frontwoman Samantha Marandola entwines itself around that note, building layers upon layers until eventually crashing down into a powerful doom dirge that hits with colossal impact as the drums and guitars join in. Throughout its near nine-minute running time, it holds your attention like the best cinematic musical experiences, conjuring desolate, beautiful imagery both sparse and hugely powerful.

OLDEST SEA began in 2017 as a solo project for Marandola and focused more on producing experimental folk music, before her husband Andrew Marandola joined her endeavours and, as she says herself, “my writing evolved into something heavier”, which is something of an understatement if the rest of this five-track album is anything to go by. Untracing follows, again thick with atmosphere. It alternates between drifting, echoing strings and crushing guitars and drums, with the vocals again adding a haunting, unique edge to the epic, funeral (or should that be funereal) doom that builds around them.

At just under three minutes long, Astronomical Twilight is by far the shortest song on the album but is no less powerful for that. Ethereal, echoing vocals drape themselves like a shroud around the piano that leads them, single bass notes reverberating through the darkness as hauntingly beautiful harmonies provide a contrast which only adds to the sense of dread that permeates this whole album. Marandola’s vocals almost feel like an incantation of sorts, ridding herself of whatever poison has led to the creation of these darkest of dark melodies.

Like NEUROSIS rewriting ANGELO BADALAMENTI’s Twin Peaks soundtrack, OLDEST SEA consistently create a dark and twisting foundation that raises the rest of these songs up to something towering, and when the drums and the bass hit it’s like seeing these dark, dripping, crumbling ruins emerge from the sodden earth before your eyes. All you can do is stare – and listen – in awe.

Eventually, on epic fourth track The Machines That Made Us Old, those ethereal vocals expand into all out screams, just briefly, that only add to the sense that you really are experiencing something special. For all the familiarity here (fans of MY DYING BRIDE and MOURNFUL CONGREGATION will recognise the foundations on which these songs are built), the combination of voice-as-instrument and voice-and-instruments breathes new life (ironically) into the funeral doom genre. Album closer Metamorphose explores themes of change and the casting off of former lives, selves and experiences – themes that run through the heart of these songs, providing a suitably ghostly end to a remarkable record

A Birdsong, A Ghost is a very dark album, both musically and thematically, and one that, although not easy to listen to, should absolutely be taken in one full sitting, like a course of medicine to purge your soul. Despite its individual parts being horribly bleak in places, there is something cleansing and cathartic in experiencing the full astonishing horror of it all. 

Rating: 9/10

A Birdsong, A Ghost is out now via Darkest Records.

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