Review Summary: What ends when the symbols shatter? What does happen to hearts?
I came across a major roadblock while trying to review
But What Ends When the Symbols Shatter. I adore this record like a Thai shemale adores trapping desperate, bewildered men, and yet for whatever reason I cannot describe what feeds the unique aesthetic of this record. The album transports you into unknown realms that are pitch-dark with smatterings of light, making for a truly transcendental experience. It is one that sweeps you away, with its beautiful bleakness carrying you to vast empty lands -- onto a new, blank canvas.
Still, none of this really describes what this album actually
is, which is probably because there is nothing quite similar to it out there (although there are some passages within Agalloch’s music that certainly pays homage to this record). There is folk. There is one man, playing heart spoken music with his acoustic. There are also inflections of chimes, short wondrous bursts of trumpets, haunting whispers looped repetitively. All of these small additions stirred into the melting pot of this album make it truly stand out amidst other folk records.
That is what makes this album so polarizing for some people. To some, the aesthetic is clear and focused, however utterly drab and unexciting it is. To others however, through the low, earthy vocals and subtle hints of bells and tambourine, there is a sense of solace in the void. That is exactly what I feel when listening. Whether it be the soul-sucking absence of light in the first track,“Death Is the Martyr of Beauty” or the harrowing, ritualistic sound of tracks such as “Ku Ku Ku”, Death In June maintains the band’s signature: bleak atmosphere without any respite. There is no regard given to other emotions; there’s no happiness, nor anger, nor confusion. This is an album born from a lugubrious haze conjured from the depths of one man's conflicted heart, made for people just like him. Maybe this played a role in the difficulty of this review- it’s a dark and dreary painting of a life questioning it’s existence, which is hard to look away from, yet even harder to understand.
