Artist: Sorceress
Title: Demo MMXXVI
Type: EP
Label: Digital / Blaggard Records
H layered over it, here’s a thing. Should this be in Mausoleum Monday or here? Good question. Argue amongst yourselves ‘cos I’m a tyrant.
But it is on Blaggard and… well it certainly has dungeon synth in its phone on quickdial. But.
Oooo, this is nice and a bit different.
‘Quest For Redemption’ opens with keyboards for a moment or two until there comes The Riff. This is just huge, slow as a funeral and with the organ sounds, the minimal percussion and the thick air of haunting shadows delivered by the riff we are somewhere between some early funeral doom maybe like Until Death Overtakes Me on ‘Prelude To Monolith’ and the darkest and most forsake dungeon synth. It feels bereft of all hope, a penance unnoticed. Ambient, blackened doom for the penitent?
‘Faithful Steed Carry Me To Freedom’ has the neighing of said steed, a desperate sound truth be told, before the eerie, heavy beat pushes on. It fills me with visions of some horse deep in mud, pulling an unbearable burden towards a goal long forgotten. Maybe it is simply dragging the corpse through mud. Wherever it starts from a dark, dark place and no sun is above.
‘Fury & Honour’ brings glistening keyboards before a cacophony of drums and the track falls into a true, slow tread of blackened sludge/doom. The drums are like machine guns, an ancient weapon barking intermittently but with the hiss and the wash of synths rising until the gun is silenced and the light returns and even birds sing on the edges of the slaughter.
Frankly its pretty awesome.
‘Triumph Crushed By Regret’ is again that religious sounding organ melody and the raw, blackened crushing funeral doom. But something in the organ really get to me; the tune is genuinely riddled with regret that leaves the song bereft of any sense of triumph remaining. It is the sound of a victory never having been worth the misery. It’s horrible and bleak and strangely so very very human. A knight maybe, returning home from a war where good men did unforgiveable things for the right reasons. Yet what else could they do?
The demo closes with ‘Heroic Burial’. The sound of placing in the ground a hero with the pomp and the ceremony of the Church as all around the riff gathers the shadows of his deeds around as witnesses. The organ music is once more perfect; bringing the sound of commemoration and solemn praise, and yet with the guitar raw and deep and slow the stain of darker things becomes the last memory.
I am rather besotted with this. For a ‘wanderer playing guitar and learning to play keyboards and drums’ it is so, so very good. The promise here is amazing; there is a world and a lore to be created here should they wish, or simply a style and a sound unique if not. But like one of the foundations of dungeon synth this is the sound of a musician simply sitting down and…finding what they want to say regardless of who listens.
But make no mistake I am invested already. I hope we do hear more because this grim, depressive blend of organ and blackened doom ambient is impossible to put down for me.
Kudos, Sorceress, kudos.
Gizmo
