ALBUM REVIEW: The Slow Dying of The Great Barrier Reef – Bismuth

It’s quite difficult to talk about a band like BISMUTH. On the one hand, their minimalist and self professed ethereal doom is often times so sparse it drifts into the world of ambient drone before things get switched on their head as the band show their ability to groove at a harder and faster rate than most of their counterparts. This disparity is on best display in their most recent effort The Slow Dying of The Great Barrier Reef, a topic terrifyingly relevant to current times and a theme that works incredibly well with the hulking intensity that BISMUTH conjure on the record.

It’s a very slow start to proceedings though, as the swelling build of the monstrous 32 minute title track opens the album. The bleak atmosphere drips with intent, the slow build reflecting the blissful ignorance that fuels the titular themes of the record. The growth hits fever pitch as the inevitable crushing weight of the bass and drums kicks in, transforming the song from a slow burn to an inferno.

The bass is truly crushing, easily one of the best aspects of this kind of funeral-cross-ambient doom, as tone takes such a huge place thanks to the minimal instrumentation. You can feel every note as they come as a steady trudge, all backed up by cavernous drums that deepen the BISMUTH sound to the abyssal depths it currently dwells within now. This is not for everyone, as this opening track requires far more attention than almost any other form of alternative music. The nuanced layers that make up the opening 10 minutes of this song are reflective and hardly attention grabbing, meaning that a want to listen to The Slow Dying is needed before even attempting to listen to the epic soundtrack to death.

The same cannot be said for the following Weltzmerch, diving immediately into the trudging mid-tempo stomp that sets BISMUTH apart so fantastically. This is an accompanying full stop to the statements made on The Slow Dying, emphatically enhancing the dying moments of this opening piece with a violent writhe before officially dying off. The gentle vocals are juxtaposed by the shrill screams that work their way through the mix and spike through the dense wall of sound.

Given how good the closing moments of this album are, it does make the near 15 minutes of sparse ambient musings less impactful than they should be. Where they seek to provide escalating tension they only find impatience as the wait for the spectacular moments when BISMUTH offer an edgier and more intense alternative to the traditionally glacial funeral doom sound. Whilst not entirely missing the mark, as The Slow Dying of The Great Barrier Reef progresses, it does show clearly where the strengths of BISMUTH lie, one of the best elements of this record. It will be interesting to see what this two piece do moving forward after displaying so clearly the seeds of a band who could morph into a pioneer of a genre that could use with an injection of fresh intensity.

Rating: 7/10

The Slow Dying of The Great Barrier Reef is out now via Dry Cough.

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