ALBUM REVIEW: Dark Waves – Black Lung
While officially on the other side, the music world is still feeling the ramifications of the pandemic. The presence of “COVID-albums” is still prevalent. The two years of limbo meant bands across the globe had to shift perspective on what they could do to remain active. For some, that meant a multitude of live streamed events. Whilst for others, including BLACK LUNG, it meant returning to the studio to refine their sound.
BLACK LUNG return from the depths of Baltimore to release Dark Waves. The eight-track album follows 2019’s Ancients and promises not to be another dark and desolate record from this period. Though can psychedelic rock mixed with doom ever escape desolation? If opener Demons is anything to go by, not entirely. Following a melodic intro tinged with shimmering percussion, the tandem riffs from Dave Cavalier and Dave Fullerton are warm without feeling fuzzy. These earthy tones allow Cavalier’s echoed vocals to slide through registers without the assistance of sonic lifting. This examination of how people become attached to our demons until they destroy us “with no remorse” isn’t necessarily high octane, but still leaves a lot for us to discover. With that in mind, there are periods where Demons runs longer than necessary.
Our interest is piqued by the title track. Throwing caution to the wind, BLACK LUNG create a song which flies close to the sun in terms of genre specific rules. The title track is upbeat and carries semblances of dark-wave. Feeling these dark waves wash over us, the lyrical content takes us by surprise. It’s no reinvention to put catastrophic lyrics against jovial instrumentals but BLACK LUNG’s balance of the two feels like life imitating art. Cavalier’s cries of “we won’t make it to shore” are anthemic in delivery and sweep us up into the typhoon of negative emotions. By the time we reach the lighter instrumental and allow our mind’s eye to drink in the carnage of our metaphorical lives, the song has slipped us by like a ship in the night.
The title track is a great example of world building which doesn’t outstay its welcome. Sadly, this isn’t the case for the rest of the album. Awaken shows atmospheric promise with a dingy intro, as the boom of Elias Schutzman’s drums opens the sonic playing field for BLACK LUNG to do as they please. The fuller band sound is stripped away for a minimalist verse, concentrating on lyrical storytelling, yet the staggered cadence of the verses allows the song to be slowed further still.
This constant winding down happens to the point where the elastic snaps and Awaken runs out of momentum very quickly. When followed by Hollow Dreams where this happens again, the quality of the record begins to drop. Mac Hewitt’s opening bassline is something to relish in as it connotes heaviness is drawing near, but this is soon counteracted by Cavalier’s slightly-too-high vocals. The vocalist settles into the song after a while, but he begins to mimic the voices which “shout and scream into the void”.
With a genre like psychedelic rock or doom metal, pacing is key. It’s vital to draw a listener into the world the band or artist is creating and give them small leads for their imagination to run wild with. The worst enemy of this is the flick of the eyes down to the runtime during songs. Hollow Dreams‘ multiple instrumental sections has us doing exactly that, breaking the illusion. That doesn’t mean these guitar parts or dreamscapes aren’t good. It simply means there isn’t a lot for us to be able to sink our teeth into. Earlier track The Cog falls victim to this also. Light and airy guitars dictate the pace of this cog in the machine. What BLACK LUNG create within this track is a sleeper attack on how society runs. However, it leans a little too far into sleeper territory itself.
Dark Waves opens with a lot of potential for this quartet. They’ve pushed the metaphorical boat out and experimented with their sound. It yields great results with the title track in particular, but they soon return to their roots and rest on those laurels. In that sense, Dark Waves becomes a record we don’t see ourselves returning to with great urgency. It isn’t a reinvention of the genre, though not every record needs to be, and ultimately all it will do is end up in the pool of other decent psych rock records.
Rating: 5/10
Dark Waves is out now via Heavy Psych Sounds.
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