Originating as a three piece in 2009, the group experienced a number of line-up changes until founding members Myles Donovan and Ayla Holland recorded and released a single demo ("Sundowning") in 2012. In 2014 the band enlisted the talents of Jennifer Christensen (cello) and released Undertaker as a trio at the beginning of the summer, an album which, paradoxically, will elude the heat and send a chill up your spine. Undertaker's chill-inducing nature is in part owed to the production, helmed by the masterful Tad Doyle at Witch Ape Studios. It is raw and energetic when moments call for more sonic tension ("Ozma's Prison") and, at certain points, the tracks take on a mausoleum-like sense of claustrophobia ("Black Angel Trumpet"), an essential sonic texture to the album's overall atmosphere.
"Sundowning" is a particularly gripping, stand-out track, all the way from the disquieting breaths of fear and anxiety that bookend the track to the melodic urgency in the track's middle. This song is a testament to the musical principle of tension and release: dissonance builds a very convincing and apprehensive atmosphere until listeners are rewarded with hauntingly beautiful melodies that are at once pastoral and bombastic in the greatest sense.
The band describes their music as "outsider classical" and "goth chamber music," which, in and of themselves, are great descriptors; however, I wish to expand on the inherent American character of the band's sound. "Carpathia" may be a tribute to the mountain ranges of Eastern European fame, but Disemballerina lend a particularly American quality to the soundscape being created, sounding more like an ode to the dark Appalachians in this writer's opinion. "Two Crows" features enough twang to evoke images of brightly-lit deserts and the dark souls that inhabit them. Dark Americana seems to be the pervading character of Undertaker, a strong response to Europe's classical monopoly on the morbid and the morose.
Undertaker is the perfect soundtrack to your seance or your summer vacation at that possessed cabin in the woods; hell, it will make a great atmospheric background for any kind of brooding. But — for a majority of listeners — Undertaker is an opportunity to delve into a dimly-lit soundscape of expertly crafted "doom." This is an album about loss, about dementia, about the anxiety one feels in that interim period of twilight before the sun truly sets on the world. This is an album that is at once meant to unsettle the soul and lull it into a romantic sleep. And those who prefer to listen closer to the soundscapes presented here may find themselves in a more harrowing place than ever before. That, my fellow lovers of all things heavy, is doom.
Words: Ian Fetters
Disemballerina @ Bandcamp