Review Summary: Eternity of Inifinite Realities
As the heartbeat fade you blood pressure lowers and brain activity ceases you are pronounced - dead.
Your body is now merely a shell devoid of everything that makes you human.
But, if you are still aware of this, something must have escaped, left the decaying contraption of muscles, nerves, arteries, bones and whatnot. Awareness is not only transcending the place of departure, but also the moment, the - when. The moment begins to stretch and collapse onto itself. Objects, faces, locations and the concept itself of traveling around matter reshapes, annihilates limitation that were forced onto you during an entire life span. Idea of traveling to get to places crumbles as naturally as the gentle sunbeams of spring transform melting ice into water. Allowing it to flow. The moment of your death did not complete the circle, it has just made you aware of it. The vessel you inhabit, the self analog - expands. (You)It’s leaving the dim lighted hospital room. Faces of loved ones tainted with dread and worry are still in your thoughts. Even more clear then moments before departure. But now, the fear that devoured your entire being and made you unvoluntary expel bodily fluids mellows. You are still aware of your own fingernails, clinging into palms, awaiting for the climax of your deteriorating condition as painkillers nullify the last of life you will ever experience. But thus, fingernails are no more. Palms are no more.
The Awareness you are is no longer bound. By anything.
Remnants of conventional knowledge reminds you of Earth. Just under the first layers of dirt a vast expanse of tectonic plates slide onto itself and communicate one with another, with you, with anybody that takes his time to listen. They speak of endurance. Enduring the neverending rape of it’s pledged surface, scarred beyond recognition by man. You can feel it’s anger, it’s strength and eternal mercy for dwellers that don’t have the capacity to empathize.
But you do.
You can’t see the malnourished young mother holding her stillborn by the entrance of a fallout shelter while nuclear winter swipes across the planet.
Planetary defense station chief can’t be seen while he discharges a heated plasma burst in his mouth while systems notify that anti matter projectiles incoming from space detonated above northern hemisphere and evaporated billions.
The shape of semi sentient algae colonies that engulf an entire continent are wasting away because a solar flare scorched the ozone layer is not known to you.
The combined history of entire mankind's warfare is dwarfed by the conflicts you don’t see, but sense in a profine, purest form that further your ever expanding understanding. In all this dark a single ray of light breaches murky, darker than black, ticker than tar barrier and initiate a cascade of supraforming light structures portraying the essence of hope.
Joy of a plant taking roots, freshness of day dawning a new, sincerity of lovers embrace balance out the bleakness and make absorbing an eternity of infinite realities bearable.
Then you wake and what awaits is equally unexplored as the dream - life.
This was by no means an interpretation of the majestic masterwork Dis Pater produced, but nearly an effort to communicate emotion and image the soundscape produced while I listened during a half awake state. The sole experience I can compare this to is a psychedelic session that rendered life changing results while I was younger. Your opinion might differ completely even though lyrical overtones mostly explore concepts of infinity, death, desolation, isolation and passage of time.
Though one star will die and freeze
Another sphere awaits me
And finally is welcoming So many die, yet few are willing
To give up their spirit
And finally be free
Shards are even longer than it’s predecessor Funerals From the Astral Sphere (it’s “just” 2h long) clocking at two and a half hours so listening it in one take is quite an endeavor.
Or is it? Most people can sit through an equally leighty movie or a play that’s probably even not that good. I tried skipping through certain tracks trying to find highlights and how a shorter version might have sounded. It simply does not work. Nothing can be cut. That would be like ripping an entire musical genre from the album. Call the slower elements ambient music, dark ambient, acapello or just distinctive nature sounds, but they are an absolute necessity for this chapter of Midnight Odyssey to function.
Empty your mind, dim the lights and rid of any distractions. Take two and a half hours and embark on an odyssey inside yourself.
You will be greeted by dark ambient, marvelous acapella, mid to high tempo black metal backed by acoustic guitars, doomy passages, shrieking, blowing instruments, catchy and unforgettable passages that flow one unto another producing an masterwork of underground music. An unforgettable and breathtaking piece of art.
