This made it's way onto my hard drive, and I'm still not sure how it got there. Nobody has fessed up. Thinking it was something else I hadn't listened to yet, I gave it a listen and I was totally stunned by what I was hearing and I haven't listened to anything else in the last 3 days.
This album is like a metal score to a Cormac McCarthy novel, blundering half blind through the mossy, wet, blue backwoods. One of the tracks is called Cosey Mo, after a character from Nick Cave's 'And The Ass Saw The Angel', and I'm convinced that it's not the only song that references that book, which I've read countless times in the decade I've owned it and have reduced it to a crumbling mass of tape and hi-lighter ink. The lyrical content is reflective of everything I love in literature: isolated rejects eking out a harassed existence in hidden parts of the world.
I'm pretty sure that Profound Lore is the new Hydra Head Records. I know HH has been revived, but Profound Lore has not let me down yet and seem to be hoarding all the really interesting acts. Subrosa is 75% female act which to me, is crazy because they play like dudes. This is probably a sexist thing to say, but it's hard to deny that one is surprised when a bandload of women deliver such crushing, frightening music. It's just not a common thing. The vocals are fantastic, powerful and confident. Even whey they drop down to a gentle, ladylike volume, they never fall into that cringeworthy weak breathiness that has been really hip with the singer/songwriter crew in recent years. it's hardly comparable, but it's a trend in female vocals across the board and one that i loathe.
I also love the use of the violin. It took me a while to even realize it was a violin. I don't know what I thought it was, i was so taken by the music as a whole, really. It sounds like swarming birds, like underwater sonar gone awry, it sounds like all kinds of crazy shit and the whole effect is otherworldly and extremely unsettling.
Another aspect I want to mention before I wrap this shoddy and poorly thought out review up is how melodic and clear this is for a doom metal album. There's lots of variation and while it's pretty damn crushing, there's a lot of delicacy going on here. It's never boring, it never stagnates in one spot for too long and when it does get repetitive, it has enough sound happening to keep the listener intent on absorbing every last bit of information. Doom Metal is a pretty broad term these days and I'm not into over-categorizing music,. Subrosa are pretty tough to pin down anyway. They're very gothic, they've got post- coming out of every orifice, they're heavy as balls and up to said balls in americana. The americana bent is not as readily apparent on this album as it is on their previous ones, but it's there, simmering away. And there's nothing I love more than a metal band successfully hauling totally disparate influences into their music and making it seem like they were never intended to be apart. This band could play with Neurosis or Slim Cessna's Auto Club and nobody would complain. There's a lot of "weird metal" going on right now, riding on the coattails of Isis and the post-metal explosion. Most are pretty mediocre, but some like Subrosa and Altar of Plagues are blowing a hole in the roof of many people's expectations. I'm pleased to that that I feel like this is an exciting time to be a metal fan. I'm not sifting through music from 10, 15, 20 years ago to find stuff I can get off to because new music is being made that's desensitizing me to whole new kinds of shit. I love it.
I have been slacking on reviews, and have been kinda running out of albums i want to write about, but I had to swing by and drop a few words about this album. I'm also going to be a guest on next week's Festivus episode of Faces of The Radio podcast, to which I will post a link when it's uploaded. Some recent content might be nice for any viewers who might make a visit to this blog as a result.
http://subrosausa.bandcamp.com/
http://subrosa.cc/
