ARCHON – Ouroboros Collapsing ...

Some music, some albums are able to induce something like the Stendhal Syndrome to those who are going to write about them. These pieces of art are so charming, so crushing, so magic, so involving that you just feel paralyzed by beauty and words seem inadequate compared to the experience of listening to the music straightaway.

A more effective way for dealing with such albums would to be take a photo of one’s own skin with goose bumps, the kind of photo posted on social networks for showing one of the physiological effects of music when it is really good.  Ouroboros Collapsing, the new album by New York-based sludge-doom band Archon causes goosebumps.

Definitely. For more than 47 minutes. And the phenomenon is recurrent, every time you approach the album after the first time. Moreover this album is addictive. You feel the need to go back to it and listen to one of four suites in it, caskets of mammoth heavy sounds, awesome doom riffs and majestic atmospheres. Ouroboros Collapsing is magnificent. For me at least.

And I should close like this, after copying and pasting the links for streaming and getting hold of the album, for those who might have, incredibly, missed this breathtaking release so far. But obviously I can’t and I won’t stop my ranting here …

Eh, cool performances are nothing new with Archon, a relatively young band but involving experienced musicians related to several other fine acts of the US sludge-doom metal scene like Agnosis, Tides Within, Alkahest, Queen Elephantine, Nevertanezra etc. . I was among the many who had been haunted by this heavy band since back in 2010 when they released their cool split with Old One and especially their début full-length album, Ruins At Dusk (see HERE). That monumental, and somehow controversial, album collected the first utters of a gorgon-like ultra-doom/sludge monster involving up to seven  different musicians fluidly contributing to the album (music, chanting, lyrics, recording, …) with their personal style.  The four long tracks of the début album had featured up to four different guitar players and four different vocal contributions in the making of a luscious, mind=warping heavy style compared to Sleep’s and encompassing crushing doom, sludge sickness and droning experimental space psychedelia, all cemented by infectious swamp-flavoured, dark groove. I had appreciated the results of this collective work. I had been hooked by the originality of the combination of sounds coming from the extended line-ups, typical of this band at that time, and the superposed vocals in those long, hypnotizing doom-sludge metal slabs graced by a skillful sound production.

Well, Archon are back after two years with a different attitude towards line-up. As a matter of fact since late 2010 their line-up was stabilized to five components, i.e. founder Andrew Jude and Nikhil Kamineni on guitars and bass, Rajah Marcelo on drums and Chris Dialogue and impressive Rachel Brown on vocals. Rachel Brown is also in charge of the keyboards.  Moreover during these last years Archon shared the stage with metal heavyweights like Unearthly Trance, Coffinworm, Wolvserpent, Negative Reaction, Apostle of Solitude, Cough, Hull, Batillus, Sea of Bones, Graven and Earthride. Archon still like to play long songs. And that’s absolutely fine, being a sludge-doom band and being able to write music and playing it in the way they do. The four long suites of Ouroboros Collapsing (called Worthless, Desert Throne, God’s Eye  and Masks) are able to capture minds and make them travel in space and time. All tracks share some common features, and especially the combination of sounds and styles partly stemming from the different musical background of all the musicians involved. The advantage of being a solid, instead of a fluid, line-up surely helped in making this album totally cohesive and consistent. Each track is monolithic and fluid at the same time. It is led by impossibly heavy riffs eating their way through the solid, drony feedback and dark and oppressive atmospheres. Sinister and groove-laden Sabbathian doom riffs and crusty sludge metal charges interact with more experimental sounds combining tempo changes, drony, ethereal space psychedelia and post-metal dissonance. The result is always the construction of impressively heavy, beautiful songs where the leading melodies sound even epic and develop according to meandering patterns. Yet these melodies hook the attention almost instinctively and keep it alive over the long time employed by each track to build up its part of the story of inner despair and disillusion narrated by the album.

Distortion and down-tuning duly rule thereby often turning guitars and bass into growling beasts competing with sick and slow roars and growls provided by Chris Dialogue and Rachel Brown as well. Even more than in the previous album, Rachel Brown’s role and contribution, in particular, stands out in making this album special. Vocal parts are fundamental additions to Archon’s power. Again, the awesome production make the voices emerge from the feedback and further reinforce darkness, despair or else add some precious doses of unexpected light. Rachel’s vocal range is stunning. Her banshee-like interactions with Chris Dialogue’s scary death growls are impressive. But the most surprising effect is given by Rachel’s clean, often doleful singing emerging through the crushing, sick, dark sounds with the freshness and primordial beauty of a stream of clear water or of a transparent aquamarine crystal sticking out of a dark rock. Rachel’s beautiful clean voice is not there to bewitch you but somehow to save you from loneliness, despair and pain materialized by the punishing music behind.  If you want to know a bit more what’s behind this ravishing album, band Archon and what and when expect for future live exhibitions, you’ll find some interesting info in the recent cool interviews to Andrew and Rachel on webzines Temple of Perdition and Echoes and Dust

If you like doom, powerful music, eclectic sounds, awesome vocals and getting goosebumps, get hold of Archon’s new album and play it loud, and with no hurry. You’ll be immediately drawn away by its drift and you’ll forget time.
Ouroboros Collapsing is available as CD via The Path Less Traveled Records since February 19th 2013, but it can be streamed and purchased as digital release as well via the official band’s page.

Words: Marilena Moroni

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