ALBUM REVIEW: EIMURIA – Bank Myna
Doom meets post-heavy on BANK MYNA’s newest record, EIMURIA. Self-proclaimed alchemists that have emerged from the Paris catacombs, the Parisian quartet have created five tracks that, in their words, conjure the spirits of Alejandra Pizarnik and Camille Claudel, two artists whose own works overtook their lives, consuming them in the end. Even without the context of what inspired EIMURIA, you can still hear the haunting qualities of each of the five songs on the album that are equal parts ethereal and dark with an overarching feeling of there being a woman scorned, screaming out until she finally gets her revenge, or more accurately recognition, that she so seeks.
Outside of opening track, No Ocean Of Thoughts, the average run time of each song rounds out to 10 minutes, yet you don’t necessarily feel that amount of time has passed with both the beauty of the compositions and the way it leaves you in a blissful trance. The first song serves as a three-minute-long intro of what’s to come where we experience droning post-rock interlaced with doom that swells in volume in a way that it feels like it’s physically around you. Adding to this experience is the haunting vocals of lead vocalist, Maud Harribey, where you find yourself envisioning a lost spirit calling out for help, with the entire ambience being likened to being on a ship in the night where the darkness and fog prevents you from seeing around you, yet you know something’s there.
This then blends into The Shadowed Body where the earlier story continues in a very atmospheric experience, only now it’s been established that the spirits we heard earlier are not to be feared as they help guide us through the darkness, told through a stunning variety of instrumentals from deep bass and gentle cymbals, guitar feedback that again swells around you, before finally concluding on stunning riffs and creaking feedback where the genre focus is more on the doom side of things, all nicely brought together, once again, by Harribey’s stunning vocals.
The only time where one song blends into the next is during the first two tracks, so the remaining three are separate with their own individual compositions. It would be so easy to go into detail on what each song does, the atmosphere BANK MYNA create, the emotions they make you feel, but that should be something you experience for yourself for the first time. So, in a summary; The Other Faceless Me is on the slower side with violins before shifting into a drone meets doom feedback where the vocals convey a feeling of pain and frustration; Burn All The Edges is potentially the most uplifting of all the songs on the album with gentle strumming yet it’s then juxtaposed with growling, rather witch-like, vocals; and concluding track L’Implorante, which has an alternative rock sound at first before we experience two false stops, and in both cases we then hear a different shift into a different composition and genre style with the final notes we hear being more post-rock focused.
A beautiful record from BANK MYNA that will take you on several journeys and help you to experience different emotions. Just simply beautiful.
Rating: 8/10
Eimuria is out now via Medication Times.
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