(Andy Synn, who spent the whole weekend at MDF, still found time to handle today’s premiere)
In my opinion, the job of an article like this – one that’s simultaneously both a premiere and a review (you might even call it a preview) – is not so much to tell you what to think as it is to shape your expectations, so that those thoughts can proceed and develop free of any incorrect assumptions or misconceptions about the music.
This is particularly relevant in this case, as while Montana-based quartet Galvanist are often billed as “Experimental Doom/Death Metal” I feel that this has the potential to be misleading, even counterproductive, going into their upcoming new album, The Silence Between Stars, which has more in common – to my ears at least – with the more progressively structured, esoterically atmospheric end of the Black Metal spectrum.
That’s not to say there aren’t some deliciously doomy moments to be found – elements like the sundered atmospheric synthscapes underpinning “Dreich” and the gloom-laden, grand guignol climax of “Spiorad” recall the bleakest (albeit still “blackened”) moments of Mizmor and Bethlehem (especially the former) – but there’s also a clear debt owed here to the likes of Leviathan and Blut Aus Nord (particularly the latter’s more cosmically-inclined compositions), and it’s in this context that the album is best approached.
