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Doom duo Kodiac from St. Louis/MO offer their 3rd EP called Formless and Void. It consists of only two tracks and has an overall playing time of 11 minutes and 2 seconds. That's short, all right. For one thing it simply doesn't need more than that to blow your mind and give you a listening experience that feels totally complete, then again it makes you want to hear more from Kodiac and their distinct style of Depressive Doom.
The two songs differ much from one another. The first one, "Nocturnal Ambrosia", is about half as long (3:44) as the second one "Figure In The Garden" (7:18). It is also an instrumental piece, whereas the other one gifts us with an abundance of vocal bliss and deeply touching lyrics. Most striking though is how they vary in the intensity of their respective sound.
"Nocturnal Ambrosia" is characterized by a mainly quiet and thrifty sound, but not in the sense of sounding "acoustic", there's definitely an "electric" feel to it coming from a cold guitar tone and tremolo in almost Black or Post Metal style. The song creates a kind of pastoral atmosphere right from the start, but the images that appear are like photographic negatives of pastoral scenes, low crackling noises add a creepy nostalgia and all this builds up a growing sense of uneasiness.
Towards the end the song gathers energy with a slow plodding but driving drum beat and sound and mood get more intense to prepare you for what's to come in "Figure in the Garden". Here nothing is quiet or thrifty - far from that - except for a calmer part in the middle of the song, pure massive Doom power thunders down on you. Sound and atmosphere are dense and intense throughout the entire song and the vocals hurl their painful and unsettling messages at you.
Despite their ostensible contrasts, the two songs are closely linked, it actually feels like they are one song. Not only do they merge seamlessly into one another, they relate to each other in their melodies, guitar tone, their moods of darkness and depressing melancholy. Even the pastoral feel of "Nocturnal Ambrosia" lingers on in "Figure in the Garden". If you listen to Formless and Void in a continuous loop (like I did the last couple days), you'll notice that it doesn't even matter with which song you start, you'll always get a cohesive story and an organic sound.
There are no frills in sound and song structures. Everything feels very immediate, natural and unfiltered, the force of the thundering sound as well as the beautiful melancholic melodies and the gut-wrenching words. Both songs together develop an avalanche-like dynamic that grabs you with an overwhelming emotional impact and inevitably tears you down into abyssal nothingness.
