For the past twenty years or so, I have suffered from a form of sleep paralysis. This manifests itself as me being fully awake inside of a dream, unable to move a muscle, physically frozen to to my bed and there is an overwhelming sense that something, or someone, of immense evil is in the room with me but they are just out of sight, yet I can feel them getting closer and closer by the second. And, to me at least, Artair’s newest release, The Hollow’s Embrace, is the perfect representation of the horror you feel from sleep paralysis. It is a smothering, sprawling triumph of art that will leave you gasping for air when you snap back to reality as the final note ends.
Across the six tracks on offer, all labelled I to VI, you will experience an artist who isn’t afraid to challenge the standards of the black metal genre and to go where the music takes them. It is such a dark piece that I doubt it would reflect back any light if you were to shine a torch directly onto it, but, at the same time, it doesn’t feel the need to rely on the tested tropes of black metal to create an atmosphere that chills you to your very core.
There is much more on offer here than blast beats and guitars played at ludicrous speed, in fact, Artair seems to deliberately stay away from these cliches and, instead, relies on their ability as a songwriter to allow the tracks on offer to reach their final destination. And their ability as a songwriter is pretty fucking good.
The use of what could be classed as standard metal drumming – for want of a better turn if phrase – is a brave move, espcially considering how many ‘purists’ won’t touch anything that doesn’t sound as if the rhythm section had just been thrown into a dryer on the highest spin setting, but it’s one that works. To build a house, you need solid foundations and to create beautiful and horrific art, you need a quality canvas, and that is what the beats give here. It allows the music to speak for itself, instead of swamping it in a cacophony of drums that seem to be there for the sake of being there. The Hollow’s Embrace doesn’t suffer from the trap that so many others seem to fall into, and it is all the better for it.
The comparison that I made to sleep paralysis wasn’t just a throw away analogy either, as Artair weaves a soundscape that holds the listener down and forces them to experience both the tender moments of a dream and the heart stopping fear you find yourself trapped in when you cannot wake and everything happening to you is so very, very, real. The drums pound like the panicked beating in your chest, the music swells to the point that you are overwhelmed, and the vocals cut through it with such a distorted howl that you are afraid to turn around to face the monster that is now breathing down your neck. It really is that damn good
I fucking love Artair’s The Hollow’s Embrace and I think you should as well. Head on over to their Bandcamp Page and help support this stunning piece of work.
