Gather around, purveyors of skronk and wonk! Today, I offer you a peculiar, yet powerful blend of ritualistic, deep-rooted blackened doom, hailing from the Emerald Isle. I myself have a rather lukewarm opinion of much psychedelic music, finding it either too scatter-shot and jammy, mired in wanky noodling and indulgent length, or plain boring and repetitive. There is, however, a specific kind of sound in particular metal that manages to dilate my pupils and take me on a journey in search of the dragon. A deep, atavistic ritual sound that speaks of ancient groves and mossy rocks, of mysterious ceremony stumbled into that opens clearings and elicits a transportative, meditative experience, whether experienced under the influence or not
I consider “psychedelic” music a broad and poorly delineated category, spanning anything from psy-trance to reggae to 70s progressive rock and all kinds of fragrant strains of metal. What they all generally have in common is some kind of connection to a mind-altering state, whether that be experienced by the creator, the audience, or both. This elevated (or subterranean) experience is often induced or at least expanded by various substances, but that’s by no means a necessity. After some deliberation, I would include Irish five-piece Soothsayer in that elusive category.
Although they are practitioners of a dark and earthy tradition akin to Schammasch or The Atlas Moth, Soothsayer did not manage to immediately take my imagination for a ride. Opener "Eroding the Sky” offers morsels of spiritual nourishment in the varied and gripping vocal performances of Liam Hughes, and the deft and shape-shifting drumming of Gerard O' Callaghan, but when the guitar work rises out of sludgier environs, it fails to gel with the rest of the composition. However, The Unbinding is an album that spirals towards an eventual zenith of transcendence, shown by the powerful Arkhaaik-like opening and entrancing developments of second track “Sooner Acceptance", with Hughes spewing forth a commanding, profane sermon with nods to Ashenspire in parts of his delivery.
Soothsayer also show a mastery of shifting, organic tempo’s that carry the listener through plodding doom and whirling blast-beats alike. The album truly comes into its own with the longest and last two tracks, with “The Vine” uncoiling into organism, cathartic melodic flourishes reminiscent of The Atlas Moth, and “A Vague Shimmer” truly transporting its audience to a space of moss-covered ritual. The album's closer manages to invoke The Ocean and Pallbearer, along with previously mentioned influences, while also featuring shamanistic throat singing and Celtic guitar motifs, Bolstered by a warm, expansive production job that gives a satisfying crunch to guitarists Marc O'Grady and Con Doyle while letting Pavel Rosa's unctuous bass lines serpentine under the surface.
The Unbinding managed to take me on a lush, journey to a dark and fertile old-growth grove. Mind-expanding in all the right ways, without stumbling into pitfalls of wankery or jammy swamps, the album shows ritualistic focus and meditative expanse can go hand in hand, dancing in a circle of hazy transcendence.