| Darkspace is a musical equivalent to an artist's depiction of a black hole. Consider the earth as a tiny spec adrift in a seemingly endless void, disconnected by unfathomable distances from the points of origin. The only candles in the darkness are unreachable stars and galaxies that have quite possibly burned themselves out long ago. In this land of celestial giants, one person is as a grain of sand on a tumultuous coast, helplessly adrift in an unyielding, dead nothingness. And at any moment, an invisible death beyond human capacity could envelop the astral traveler. This album is an aural match to these realizations and sensations. In technical summation, the band is two guitars playing tremolo-picked riffs and blizzard-style walls of noise, one barely audible bass, one relentlessly blasting drum machine buried deep in the mix, opaque keyboards, and indecipherable wails - in comparison to past works, III is a mix of I's guitar-driven works and II's long ambient, shoegaze-like backing. But saying this is all Darkspace entails is like telling an evolutionist that the theory fails because I don't see monkeys spontaneously morphing into humans - or to be fair on both sides, like telling a Christian that the notion of a Jewish zombie who was his own father will make me live forever if I symbolically eat him and talk to him telepathically is silly'hey, where'd everyone go? These simplistic elements are expertly deployed across each track to manifest as a bottomless surge of menacing metal. Each song, like their titles, revolves around particular motifs, but overall have nothing in the way of traditional structure. The album chugs from chaotic crescendos, uncomfortably calm passages, relentless variation among repetition and ethereal sequences; it's fair to say it sounds positively alien. And by that I don't mean a metal take on the X-Files theme. Darkspace III is chaotic, as mentioned, but executed with cold, calculated movements bereft of characteristics typical for music ' there are no emotive riffs, heartfelt solos, quotes ripe for Facebook, epic synths, or hooks to hum here. What is written here is one listener's interpretation; thanks to an overtly minimalist theme across the board with this band, nearly all elements, save for the music itself of course, are left to one's imagination. This probably isn't a release one could pick up and enjoy while driving home from work, or while browsing the Internet; Darkspace III is an album meant to be experienced with no distractions, preferably with a good set of headphones. |
