Arctic Sleep - Kindred Spirits

By Calen Henry. Arctic Sleep’s seventh full length, Kindred Spirits, is something uncommon for a metal album. It is comforting and inviting. The production is natural, the drums sound full, the guitars are tuned low and driven warm, and the vocals are a deeply melodic and harmonies abound.

By Calen Henry.

Artwork by Jennifer Weiler.

Arctic Sleep’s seventh full length, Kindred Spirits, is something uncommon for a metal album. It is comforting and inviting. The production is natural, the drums sound full, the guitars are tuned low and driven warm, the vocals are deeply melodic and harmonies abound. Even the fret-less bass glissandos sound warm and inviting. It is also an album about death catalyzed by the passing of sole permanent member Keith D’s cat Yoda. The lyrics go deep and complement the instrumental sound to make it into a pastoral rumination on death, life, moving on, and letting go as well as an elegy for Yoda.

Album opener "Meadows" sticks close to the melodic doom sound of 2014’s Passage of Gaia until the song’s last section, where it opens up the sonic palette with a cello drop then some truly soaring vocals. As Kindred Spirits progresses the it continues to open up and explore more genres. Melodic doom metal shares the spotlight with extended range chugging, fuzzed out Smashing Pumpkins style accents, middle eastern tinged tapping, a djembe accompanied acoustic instrumental track, post-punk-ish driving bass, and Jesu-ey walls of warm distortion before going full drone on album closer “Old Soul”. It is an unexpectedly perfect conclusion; the sound of birds accompanying washes of guitar before multi-tracked cat purring closes out the album in what I can only interpret as “kitty heaven”.

Despite all the genre changes the album has excellent flow and the 69 minute run-time flies by, likely due to Keith's singular vision; the songs and lyrics were written by him and he plays all instruments, save drums. He's joined by Nick Smalkowski on drums (that he made!), after being absent for Passage of Gaia and a couple of guest vocalists to complete the sound.

For such a slim cast of characters the result is astounding. The album is bursting with ideas and sounds, though all delivered at a relaxed doomy pace. Despite a fairly loud (DR 6) master, details of the different instruments come through and the whole record sounds great.

Despite my familiarity with the band I managed to completely miss the kickstarter for Kindred Spirits and was unaware of it until release day. Don't make my mistake. Get on this. It's fantastic.