Ardour Loom is a black metal band from Oregon. They play an atmospheric, post-rock and ambient-filled style of black metal--not unlike many of the “Cascadian” bands from the surrounding areas. The fact that Ardour Loom are yet another band clearly influenced by Wolves in the Throne Room and their ilk raises an interesting question: how long will it be until ripping off Wolves’ classic Two Hunters album becomes unacceptable in American black metal? From the looks (or rather, the sounds) of Ardour Loom’s first untitled demo release, the current answer to that question is still “No time soon.”
Featuring two twenty-minute tracks full of meandering post-rock and
fast, melodic black metal, Ardour Loom’s debut release is a testament to how to
effectively rip off a classic album whilst still appearing original and
interesting. While this demo release may
not tread much new ground through its forty-minute runtime, it attempts to
organize its content so as to appear not completely similar to its contemporaries
and actually makes itself fairly interesting in the process, while still
wearing its influences proudly on its sleeves.
Initiates of Formless introduces the listener with a slow,
drum-driven passage (highly reminiscent of WitTR’s Cleansing) before
beginning to flirt with the band’s harsher side, briefly indulging in quick
blast-driven riffs before curling back into spacey melodicism. After that, it’s your typical back-and-forth
post-black metal affair for the remaining fifteen minutes of the track,
switching through melodic post-rock build-ups, mid-paced atmospheric black
metal, and blast-driven, ‘epic’ crescendos.
The second track, Ascend the Crimson Confluence, sees the band
continue this basic build-up/crescendo/rebuild structure until its very end,
driving the listener through a roller coaster of numerous crescents and valleys
before leveling out in a slow outro.
While its individual ideas might not be totally original in themselves,
the ways this demo’s pieces are stitched together create a fairly enjoyable and
interesting listen, despite the fact that most seasoned black metal fans will
realize that they've heard most of these ideas before. Ardour Loom’s debut isn’t about doing things
originally so much as it is doing them interestingly and effectively--for which they definitely succeed. While clearly not reinventing the wheel--or
even really turning it at all, for that matter--Ardour Loom show that not all
ideas need to be torn apart, extensively scrutinized, and rebuilt in order to
remain interesting; sometimes simply reorganizing the pieces you started with
can yield results just as interesting as those birthed in complete isolation.
4/5
Buy the cassette: Parasitic Records
Jam the first track: Youtube
