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While Across Tundras is known for writing expansive, atmospheric, doom-influenced metal that's got some clear ties to Isis' and Pelican's sounds, the band shows some individuality on their full-length debut, Dark Songs of the Prairie. And it didn't even require them to completely overhaul the style they established on Divides.
Produced by the band itself, Dark Songs' raw and gritty recording is one of the effort’s most prominent sources of character. There are minor imperfections -- hints of noisy static and dirty fuzz -- that seem to have been left behind on purpose, and enough thick distortion to give all of the record's 51 minutes a rocky, natural surface. So, even though the band's chunky riffs, melody-soaked chords and intricate string plucking are familiar, they don't sound the same.
Dark Songs will probably be filed under some sort of doom metal category, but it's hardly a heavy album in the traditional sense of the word. Melody oozes from the layers of guitar picking and thick rhythm parts, the drumming is consistently accessible and moderately paced, and the sparse, shouted vocals are distant and breezy, often fighting to even break through the wall of distorted sound. Hell, "The Old Sexton" and "Aura Lea, Maid of Golden Hair" are acoustic songs. Instead, the heaviness stems from the rhythm section's loud, lumbering movements and, even moreso, the big scope of the songs. Six- to 11-minute tracks are no everyday undertaking and, when it comes to such gloomy music, they're bound to carry weight.
This solid release has the ability to take listeners out of their surroundings and plop them in some spacey, surreal world, but I'm hard-pressed to remember a whole lot of it once I return to Wisconsin. After all, Dark Songs isn't about hooks; it's about building huge atmospheres with rhythmic repetition and guitar parts that speak as loud as words. While it's a definite success in that regard, its rawness will probably relegate it to a crowd that was already into this brand of music.
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