The crossover of Dylan Walker (Full of Hell) and Lee Buford (The Body) sounds like it was always meant to happen, as both musicians are extremely diverse with multiple collaborations and like-minded experimentation in extreme sound. As Sightless Pit, the project released a debut album Grave of a Dog in 2020, which to me wasn't really a work that stood so steadily on its feet. While the follow-up Lockstep Bloodwar is not really a piece of the same cake, the same uncertainty echoes in its material.
Completely void of guitars, the record contains elements from multiple different musical islands. One can come across trap rap beats, slight trip hop atmospheres, ambient and drone, the element of noise is quite prominent at times and the vocals are mostly comprised of whispers / screams, in middle or slow paced tempos in a rather down tuned and fatigued album. Lockstep Bloodwar also has multiple features almost in every track, musicians lending especially their vocals for the pieces that go more towards its trap rap lines.
While the endeavor is surely ambitious, problems lie in the overall coherence of the release. It feels like Sightless Pit are constantly trying a series of unconventional elements without a clear objective, the tunes wander around the different genres without achieving to evoke any particular feeling, for example it is not as unsettling as a noise album, it's not as soothing as a trip hop release, it's not really post industrial, it's not as tongue in cheek as trap and so on. Lockstep Bloodwar is an attempt to open a way to a new soundscape, but each of its components is actually timid and in the end, suboptimal.
I only enjoyed the album opener, which gives some nice 90's Portishead vibes, and the noise track "Morning of a Thousand Lights" as both musicians are very capable of such compositions. Particularly dreary were "Flower to Tomb" which had me thinking that one needs to listen to some Imperial Triumphant to understand how to record distressing vocals, the self-titled track (what is this?) and the lethargic "False Epiphany". Brittle shrieks and feeble vocals all over, as is the record itself.
DAMAGE: 2/5
Listen:
No comments:
Post a Comment