Wyllt

Albenrezension

Stemming from a mythological story of a horseman who hypnotizes onlookers with the slow, monotonous tempo of his horse's gallop, Black Math Horseman's Wyllt is a dark and stormy debut. As a barely classifiable combination of shoegaze and metal, numbing repetition is a big part of the album's detached charm, with the icy vocals of Sera Timms melting and dripping over solid cobblestone doom rock foundations. The resulting listening experience is a nervy, threatening one, formed of expansive, dismal atmospheres spotted with the occasional savage outburst. Recorded as organically as possible by Scott Reeder (Kyuss, Goatsnake, the Obsessed) with minimal overdubbing, the songs give way to one another with no particular distinction in clouds of reverb, articulated by sub-sonic bass, Neanderthal drumming, and crawling waves of razor-sharp distortion. After five songs straight of rumbling build-ups and releases to ominous pastures, on the 11-minute spanning "Bird of All Faiths and None/Bell from Madrone" the sleeping dragon is finally startled awake to wreck fiery havoc in a roaring, thrashing finale that's equally scary and sublime.