Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough Volume I (2020)Release ID: 21681
Originally intended as a split album where each band covered the others tracks, Stygian Bough has become a much different (and undoubtedly more interesting) proposal. As everyone is aware I'm sure, Erik Moggridge, aka Aerial Ruin, provided some of the vocals for Bell Witch's Mirror Reaper. On this collaboration he has become an even more integral part of the set up and if ever a collaboration was meant to be then this is it. The two outfit's styles, though seemingly very different, actually combine perfectly to produce a truly unique atmosphere of wistful melancholy. The fact that Bell Witch generate their atmosphere without guitars, relying instead on Dylan Desmond's bass and haunting organ and piano from Jesse Shreibman, gives a different dynamic to their sound than some of the glacial, ultra-heavy riffs employed by other leaders in the funeral doom field. Their's is less a soul-crushing, hopeless despondency than a reflective, soul-searching acknowledgement of an inner melancholy and a cathartic coming-to-terms with it. Combining this with Erik Moggridge's gentle acoustic strumming and ethereally serene vocal style gives their music an even more beautifully heart-rending and emotional centre.
The album is basically three sections, spread over five tracks and little in excess of an hour of runtime, with the opening epic, The Bastard Wind, forming the first movement, the two-part Heaven Torn Low forming the second and the short Prelude and concluding track The Unbodied Air forming the third and final movement. The concept of the album is apparently expanded from the song Rows (Of Endless Waves) from Bell Witch's 2012 album Longing and deals with the tale of the ghost of a long-dead king, trapped in the ocean's endless waves, who longs to reach the land where he believes he will be reborn to rule again.
The Bastard Wind opens it's almost twenty minutes with an introspective first four minutes featuring Moggeridge's gentle acoustic guitar and sorrowful vocals before Dylan and Jesse dive in with their heaving waves of bass and drum crashing over the listener and leaving them lying submerged as if suspended in some giant sensory deprivation tank with only their own inner emotions for company. Part one of Heaven Torn Low, subtitled The Passage, is a lengthier example of Aerial Ruins particular style of melancholy neofolk featured in The Bastard Wind's opening that really is as gorgeous as it is haunting, it's thirteen minutes being one of the most exceptional examples of this style of folk I have encountered to date. Part two, subtitled The Toll, is the Yang to part one's Yin as the Bell Witch boys heave in once more, the pace slows, the atmosphere thickens and Erik's ephemeral vocals soar over the boiling morass they create. After the short instrumental Prelude, the album's closer The Unbodied Air begins it's epic twenty minutes and features the album's heaviest moments before calming towards the track's midpoint, then once more soaring to the album's final moments.
In many ways Bell Witch, particularly with this collaboration, have taken their cue from the likes of Patrick Walker's Warning and delivered a more vulnerable and consequently more affecting and personal take on extreme doom and for that I salute them and congratulate them on some of the most gorgeous extreme metal music to date.
The Breaking, Ethereal Waves
It's weird hearing a new album from Bell Witch after 2017's Mirror Reaper, to be honest. Since I hadn't heard of Bell Witch until that release and still haven't gone back to Four Phantoms or Longing, Mirror Reaper existed in its own solitary purgatory of Funeral Doom bliss. It was, and still is, such a powerful and important album to me that diving into Stygian Bough Volume I was strange and alien even while so many aspects of the music felt so familiar. The waves of distortion echoing out from the bass guitars and the lethargic but calculated blows of the drums transported me right back to the forceful eulogy of their late drummer Adrian Guerra, which was something I consciously had to restrain from doing since this album is a much different experience than Mirror Reaper, even though Bell Witch's overall style hasn't changed in the slightest. Thankfully to break up some of the Funeral Doom monotony they are now fully accompanied by Eric Moggridge and his moniker Aerial Ruin, which took me be surprise when I first heard the announcement for this album. It really shouldn't have since, to my ignorance, Moggridge was the main clean vocalist on Mirror Reaper and has had his hand in every single Bell Witch release apart from their self-titled in 2011, meaning this is less of a "Bell Witch & Arerial Ruin" project and more of just a Bell Witch project, not to take away from Moggridge's Neo/Dark Folk performance and influence. Unlike Mirror Reaper Moggridge's moody acoustic guitar takes the center stage for a good portion of the album, with the blast of Bell Witch manifesting for the culminations of each track instead of being the sole focal point.
The use of acoustic guitar may not sound like a groundbreaking feat, but in Bell Witch's case it signals a fresher start for the band moving forward. The gentle and folky but still brooding acoustic guitar gives Stygian Bough Volume I a brand new perspective and more room for exploration past the ordinary and disgustingly slow Funeral Doom fare. Since darker folk is Aerial Ruin's normal territory, Moggridge's thin but emotive vocal style really carries the entire album forward, with the growled Bell Witch vocals being extremely few and far between. Truthfully this album consists of only three songs instead of five, with "Heaven Torn Low" being split into two parts and "Prelude" acting only as an intro to "The Unbodied Air". Each track follows a very similar pattern of Moggridge's acoustic musing eventually culminating in a wave of bass distortion and distant growling from Bell Witch. The ways that each song progresses and builds is masterful, using the acoustic guitar melodies and rhythms to supplement the eventual dive into crushing Funeral Doom as well as the two innately contrasting styles to keep the album flowing and moving forward instead of being stuck in the stationary perdition that was Mirror Reaper. Although the compositions can still be painfully slow, with each of the three main songs being around 20 minutes long, the note density is much higher than Bell Witch's previous outings thanks to the full incorporation of Moggridge's folk elements, especially on the 13 minute "Heaven Torn Low I (The Passage)". This track showcases everything that's great about Aerial Ruin's performance in this album, from the moody folk riffs, the subtle but rewarding progression of the main theme throughout the song, and the impassioned vocals.
The transitions over to Bell Witch's portions, and Bell Witch's performances in general honestly, are admittedly a bit rough around the edges. "The Bastard Wind" does a fantastic job of writing transitions into the crushing Funeral Doom sound since it relishes in the time it takes to build up to the climax 10 minutes into the track. Everything feels like it fits together perfectly, but the same can't be said for "Heaven Torn Low" or "The Unbodied Air", with each seemingly rushing the transitions in a way that really breaks up the flow of the album. It's also impossible to ignore that Bell Witch also lost something in their sound in the three years since Mirror Reaper, with their performance on this album sounding not as despair filled or punchy. I'm unsure whether this is because of the drums being more unassuming in the mix, the bass chords losing some depth and volume, or a combination of other production choices, but something just isn't there. It's a possibility that this was a creative choice in order to mesh better with Aerial Ruin's sound, but I still personally think that whatever it was, it was a slight error on their part. Bell Witch is supposed to be the despair-filled climax on this collaboration and most of their performances on "Heaven Torn Low II (The Toll)" and "The Unbodied Air" don't quite have the despondent impact that they could have had.
That being said, "The Bastard Wind" is the prime example of what happens when all of these pieces come together all but perfectly, with the rest of the album lagging behind just a touch. The way Moggridge sets up the main theme with folky acoustic guitar, the transitions into Bell Witch's weighty chord progressions, the progression of the track as a whole into a worthwhile climax, and the slow decline afterwards is exactly the formula that this collaboration was looking for. Unfortunately, they try to replicate this winning formula for another 40 minutes and while still being a gorgeous soundscape of dark Folk and reflective Funeral Doom with subtle additions of other elements like the more prominent organ in "The Unbodied Air", it's missing a distinct punch after the opening track. The atmosphere of contemplation and reflection is still impressively strong, with Bell Witch progressing their standard lyrical themes of death and suffering into something slightly more uplifting and focused more on the introspection of one's self in regards to the world around them.
Stygian Bough Volume I, in a surprising turn of events, shows that Bell Witch's crushingly forlorn sound can fall short in comparison to well-written and gloomy acoustic folk. Even though this album is very formulaic in how its structured, I'm grateful to see that Bell Witch was able to move their sound in a different direction by fully incorporating an artist that had been a part of their act for so long. Although Stygian Bough offers a very distinct Funeral Doom experience I really hoped for so much more from the two Bell Witch members, especially since Moggridge's performance was absolutely stellar. Even though the atmosphere of ethereal reflection and reckoning gripped me pretty tightly, too much of this hour long experience felt either forced in regards to the transitions or simply uninteresting. Bell Witch's performance needed more heft and variety to keep up with what this album was trying to do, and apart from "The Bastard Wind", it never really got there.
