On April 5th Ripcord Records will release II: Aging & Formless, the second album by the UK band Vnder A Crvmbling Moon, whose lineup features members of Garganjua, Conjurer, and Codex Alimentarius, and whose music could be thought of as a formulation of post-metal that incorporates elements of sludge and doom.
No music from the new album has yet been revealed, and so today’s reveal is a big one — the first single from this 7-song opus. Its name is “Breach The Sky“, and it comes in the middle of the album’s running order.
Lyrically, the album narrates the wandering of a lost soul looking for an escape and a rest from life’s insufferable travails, although the rest that the searcher ultimately finds is mysterious — and daunting.
The music in the song we’re premiering itself feels like a desperate escape in progress. The guitars sear as they wail, ringing in dense yet piercing tones like broken chimes around the visceral throb of a prominent bass and the sharp crack and pulverizing slug of the drums.
The guitars create an immersive and enveloping atmosphere of distress, but the raw and wrenching vocals are even more distressing in their throat-lacerating intensity. Sometimes the music feels like the sonic equivalent of a vast sea of pain, rolling and heaving all the way to the horizon, with the listener tossed and submerged by it.
Yet, like a glistening sea burnished by a setting sun, the music is also beautiful, as well as dire. It presents sweeping panoramas of despondent glory, carrying the listener far way (with the aid of that earth-moving bass and those compulsive beats). Along the way we encounter a soulful solo that resembles a smoky saxophone in its tone, and the shimmering stratospheric brilliance of the guitars, but the absolutely ravaging vocals never let us forget the agony from which escape is sought.
After this, you might want to shake yourself like a wet dog in an effort to remember where you were before the song began, and no doubt you’ll be eager to discover where you’d go next if the song’s mysterious final seconds were allowed to segue into the next track now.
Andy Price – Bass
John Davidson – Guitar
Ray Arrell – Vocals
Scott Taylor – Guitar
Steve Humphreys – Drums
The new album follows the band’s full-length debut, I: Oblivion, which was released in May of last year by Church Road Records. The album was written, recorded and mixed by Vnder A Crvmbling Moon during isolation and “truly is a reflection of being engulfed by an insufferable world”.
Ripcord Records and the band will release II: Aging & Formless on digipack CD and digital formats, and pre-orders are available now.
PRE-ORDER CD:
https://ripcordrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ii-aging-formless
PRE-ORDER DIGITAL:
https://vnderacrvmblingmoon.bandcamp.com/album/ii-a-g-i-n-g-f-o-r-m-l-e-s-s
FOLLOW THE BAND:
https://www.facebook.com/vnderacrvmblingmoon