Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough Volume I

By Justin C. You’d be forgiven for thinking Stygian Bough Volume 1 was a split, since it does list both Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin as artists, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. This album features Erik Moggridge, who plays dark, acoustic folk under the name Aerial Ruin, playing with Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman, the duo that makes up Bell Witch.

By Justin C.

Artwork by Adam Burke.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Stygian Bough Volume 1 was a split, since it does list both Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin as artists, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. This album features Erik Moggridge, who plays dark, acoustic folk under the name Aerial Ruin, playing with Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman, the duo that makes up Bell Witch. It’s not a new band, per se--it’s not even a new idea, since Moggridge contributed vocals to Bell Witch’s monstrous album Mirror Reaper. It’s a collaboration. Or, given that the music often drifts into tempos so slow that metronomes can’t measure them, a funereal relay race, with both musical entities passing ideas back and forth.

Maybe the clearest example are the songs “Heaven Torn Low I (the passage)” and “Heaven Torn Low II (the toll).” Part I is mostly Aerial Ruin’s show, featuring Moggridge’s inimical clean vocals and acoustic guitar. But as the song progresses, Bell Witch begins to creep in around the edges, giving Moggridge’s sound the epic swell that’s usually implied in Aerial Ruin’s music, but not actually present.

Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin live. Photos by Nessie Spencer (licence).

As Part I slowly fades, Part II roars to life with the distorted bass and slow-moving melodicism that’s unmistakably Bell Witch. Moggridge continues to provide vocals, but massive, distorted bass notes stretch out and break into howls. The songs clearly take heavy emphasis from Aerial Ruin and Bell Witch, in that order, but it would be a mistake to say that Part I is “Aerial Ruin’s song” and Part II belongs to Bell Witch. One often takes center stage, but the other is always supporting and expanding.

There’s a lot of heart-breaking beauty in this album, and even though it’s just over an hour--which is pretty tame by funeral doom standards--it has the effect of dilating time. I listened to this album during a long drive, the first in a long time, and the light, pandemic-affected traffic on top of the music made me feel as if I were being pulled into some other realm. The album feels endless at times, but not in a tedious or tiring way. Timothy Leary’s old drug-addled adage of “turn on, tune in, and drop out” applies in a weird way, but no LSD is needed here. The artistry itself that takes you away.

Dawn of Ouroboros - The Art of Morphology

By Master of Muppets. Versatility is a tough thing to pull off well. Too much of it and any given album is likely to be a jarring mess, not enough and it's Disturbed. While older, seasoned acts tend to more or less settle into the confines of one genre or other, many young bands find themselves to explore their sonic boundaries at will.

By Master of Muppets.

Artwork by Jill Colbert.

Versatility is a tough thing to pull off well. Too much of it and any given album is likely to be a jarring mess, not enough and it's Disturbed. While older, seasoned acts tend to more or less settle into the confines of one genre or other, many young bands find themselves to explore their sonic boundaries at will. Though the fruits of such youthful ventures are often spirited and compelling, they are not always particularly well-guided endeavors, nor do the wide scopes of the artist's intent necessarily manage to find their mark; many debut albums attempt to be more than they're actually capable of being, but then again many debut albums aren't Dawn of Ouroboros' The Art of Morphology. It's actually possible that most albums aren't The Art of Morphology, but that's neither here nor there. What's here is one badass album, and what's there is an absence of reasons as to why you shouldn't be jamming out to it right this second.

Before we get too far on course with this great album, we must wander off course to pay tribute to… another great album! In the name of karmic balance, I must admit to have only stumbled across Morphology while trying to get the most bang for my buck; Naturmacht Productions offered it included at a discount alongside What We Leave Behind, the latest offering by Swedish doom act Soliloquium, and the only thing I love more than Katatonic doom is pinching the proverbial penny. If the deal is still going on whenever you read this, I'd urge you to take advantage as both albums are well worth your time. I'll almost certainly be back to babble about What We Leave Behind at a later date, but in the event that you can't be patient or I can't be trusted, I'll say this: it's a wonderful piece of modern post-doom on a lovely label, and without either I would never have found the excellent album in discussion today. Everybody, say 'thank you!'

Categorizing the Katatonia core of Soliloquium or explaining the appeal of saving money are relatively straightforward tasks. Describing Dawn of Ouroboros' sound, on the other hand, is no such thing. These Californians wear a lot of hats, adopting several sonic styles throughout Morphology's 8 tracks and pulling all of them off downright fiercely. Proggy, deathy riffs? Check. Frostbitten tremolos and blackened shrieks? Ch-ch-check. Clean, pleasant passages with ethereal vocals? You know how this game works, I'd also throw in 'melodeath sensibilities', 'symphonic flourishes' and 'random djent outbursts' if I felt like continuing that shtick, but I don't. The point is that Dawn of Ouroboros do a lot of things with 43 minutes, and they do them surprisingly well for this being a debut. The Art of Morphology is a constantly shifting soundscape, a hostile world where the weather's always changing and yet it feels like home nonetheless.

This vibrant sense of variety brings with it a feeling of vitality so vaguely, faintly familiar that it almost feels foreign to today's metal climate. Dive through any genre on Bandcamp and you'll find not only several prominent artists of the scene but also myriad clones, all attempting to cash in on a sound that's been proven to work by 'doing [genre] right;' The Art of Morphology has that mythical air of a band just being themselves and having fun with their own sound, the kind of palpable sincerity and earnestness found amongst such unifying, time tested classics as In Flames' Whoracle or Pantera's Far Beyond Driven - except, again, this particular slab of exploratory greatness is a friggen debut. The potential that tracks such as the artfully balanced prog death of "Pinnacle Induced Vertigo " or the symphonic blackness of "Serpent's Charm" foretell is impressive and incredibly promising, to say the very least.

I love The Art of Morphology, and I am absolutely gunning for Dawn of Ouroboros' future. I found this album entirely by accident, only to discover the first album to make me genuinely excited about a young band's future in years. It's well crafted, well paced and well executed; The Art of Morphology is one of those special albums likely to unite fans from all ends of the metal spectrum, and it is incredibly refreshing to find such a thing as the rest of the world is falling apart. If I somehow haven't sold you on this sweet slice of scariness yet, I would like to point out that every shriek, growl, roar and otherwise nameless vocal declaration of war uttered within Morphology's tracks was delivered by one loud little lady named Chelsea Murphy. You would be doing yourself a disservice as a fan of metal to allow yourself to miss out on her incredible performance here on Morphology.

Eye of Nix - Ligeia

By Justin C. A tidy genre tag for Eye of Nix is elusive. We could go with Black/Doom/Avant Garde, from their Bandcamp page, and that’s more or less O.K., but that leaves out the gothic, psychedelic, and sometimes operatic elements. Maybe “post-everything” covers it.

By Justin C.


A tidy genre tag for Eye of Nix is elusive. We could go with Black/Doom/Avant Garde, from their Bandcamp page, and that’s more or less O.K., but that leaves out the gothic, psychedelic, and sometimes operatic elements. Maybe “post-everything” covers it.

Their newest, Ligeia, is that rare album that manages to encapsulate a wide palette of sounds without sounding like an album made by seven different bands. The first track, “Concealing Waters,” is actually a pretty good introduction in more ways than one. It’s a mysterious opener that showcases a lot of the sounds you’re going to hear on the rest of the album. Lush guitars and clean vocals start out, creating a doomy, psychedelic start reminiscent of Ides of Gemini and even a little bit of The Doors. Vocalist Joy Von Spain weaves a spell, but the perspective takes a hard left when the drums start to blast and she adds blackened harshness to her vocals. Sure, the song is almost 7 minutes long, but in a contradictory way, it feels both more immediate and more expansive than that run time suggests.

“Pursued” charges out of the gate with more of a death metal feel, but the proggy, off-kilter touches you heard in the album opener are still there, even if the mood has suddenly turned more vicious. This track also features the first demonstration of Von Spain’s operatic style of vocals. It’s typically not a style I enjoy in metal or its natural habitat--although I appreciate the skill--but Von Spain’s use of it as just one of the styles in her arsenal works for me.

The rest of the album dwells in these dualities--”Stranded” starts in an ethereal plane before moving to churning heaviness--and it’s a sound to behold. All of the band members get a chance to shine here. The intricacy of the drumming, the atmospheric guitar, the bass providing the solid bridge connecting the instrumentals, and the synths and “sound collages” are all showcased at one point or another, but yet this is still very much a band effort, and that band is exploring its own path in a very unique space. Even if one of the many things I mentioned here is usually a turn off for you, I highly recommend you give the whole a chance.