Archon - The Ruins at Dusk

[ajude]

Hey.. I'm new here & didn't see any reviews posted, so I wanted to post a couple of my favorites:

http://www.lurkerspath.com/2010/12/20/archon-the-ruins-at-dusk/

http://www.thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/album-reviews/a/archon-the-ruins-at-dusk-cd-2010/

http://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2010/12/14/archonreview/

If anyone has any feedback..feel free to leave it here!

[Eyehatehippies]

http://www.crawlingchaoscollective.com/ ... s-at-dusk/

Archon – The Ruins At Dusk

Reviewed by Nyx Nightshade





Seeing as no one really knows what Dinger is doing these days, and I don't have the same appetite for revolutionary social consciousness that I did when I was a young whipper snapper, I've decided to pick up some of the slack in the music reviews department here at the Crawling Chaos Collective.



This album was first submitted to us awhile ago, I gave it a listen, thought it represented some of the values that we exhibit here at The Collective, and was under the impression that someone would review it. As the saying goes, if you want to make sure that things get done, then make sure that things get done. No better rabbit to do them than myself, I guess.



New York City's Archon play slow, tortured doom metal with an emphasis on also creating an atmosphere of psychedelia and black metal. It's an interesting approach that fellow New Yorkers Batillus have also come to embrace, and Archon have quite a good deal of success with the style. What makes Archon stand out are their dynamic breaks between crushing blackened doom and hazy mind expanding jams. At their best, these peaks and valleys are almost trance inducing, but as with anything of this nature, how long any individual can actively engage listening to sporadic jamming on one seemingly endless riff is a very subjective experience.

The guitar tone represents a vivid contrast to the typical tones of doom oriented bong rock, instead focusing on an icier tone and It's still smooth, but it has teeth. The bass is punchy and warm, and the drum performances emphasize the heaviness of the basic rhythms, and the groove. There are two reasons why this release isn't going to be the most accessible thing in the world: first, the four songs on this album are incredibly long and drawn out. At nearly an hour, if this isn't your thing, it will wear out its welcome very rapidly. For those who dig deeper, replay value will be higher. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the vocal performances are way over the top. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for way over the top performances, if they work, and there's always someone out there who will think that they work. I've heard Mercyful Fate, Cirith Ungol, Vio-Lence, Immortal, and many others criticized for over the top vocal styles, even amongst metal circles, but to me, many of these styles work well. The vocals presented on this album are by no means sub par, and there's a good variety to them, but they don't hold back. They are in your face, large and in charge, and this will scare some listeners away, as will the more extreme vocal styles, which are the majority of them.



The songs themselves are driven by riffs, dynamics, and atmosphere. The structures themselves are fairly straight forward, allowing a flowing journey through dark territories. The album's most progressive track is not surprisingly its 21 minute closing piece, an epic meditation on the role of layers and dynamics in heavy music. Still, it's a long listen before that last song even begins, but this kind of a mentality is not going to be predominantly accessible to the ADDH generation.

But then again, when you name your band Archon, I think that you probably have a firm grasp of the inaccessible going in. We all could use more prolonged understanding of the layers and dynamics in music, and in life, even those of us who need to pop a pill in order to do it.



- Nyx Nightshade

[Yupr]

We have a split EP with these guys. Very cool stuff.