ALBUM REVIEW: Dark Sky Burial – V.I.T.R.I.O.L.


Had I been told four or five years ago that the spirit of psyche-exploring, experimental Electro/Industrial duo Coil would be alive and flourishing in the hands of Napalm Death’s bass player, I would have been … surprised. 

Certainly, the global pandemic and its fallout did strange things to a lot of us and introspective, isolated time spent dealing with the deaths of loved ones (plus his own journey of self-exploration) has informed Shane Embury’s Dark Sky Burial project — with the first of this project’s releases coming in April, 2020. 

As it turns out Embury’s been sitting on a plethora of musical interests for years, many of which don’t easily fit within the parameters of his day job (or other, more Rock or Metal-aligned projects). 

And that’s not to say that Napalm Death doesn’t innovate, far from it. The band’s tremendous Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism from 2020 featured some intriguing deviations, like the slave-ship trudge of “A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen.” 

But while Napalm Death have given nods to Swans and Sonic Youth in recent years, Dark Sky Burial gives Embury an opportunity to spread his sonic net even wider to make music that sounds more in the realms of Aphex Twin, Dead Can Dance or a sci-fi movie soundtrack than even the most experimental of guitar-centric Rock music. 

V.I.T.R.I.O.L (Consouling Sounds) brings together a selection from the 10 albums that Embury has released under the Dark Sky Burial moniker over the past four years and it’s a collection with no weak links. 

Opening with the sci-fi industrial noir of “Decay Is The Matrix” (complete with saxophone effects) and its ominous, dark, echoing stomp, Embury treats the listener to 10 electronic (mostly instrumental) pieces that take in everything from Ambient to Industrial Techno to Drone – alongside occasional nods to influential figures like Killing Joke (see the eastern-tinged melodies of “Excarnation”). 

 

Despite Embury’s professed love of Hammer horror, V.I.T.R.I.O.L. never comes across as camp or comic. With the combination of the dark, Industrial beats, tied to psychedelic synth textures, you might imagine this as the outcome of Coil entering a Godflesh recording session and proceeding to strip away anything too overtly Metal and focussing on the more danceable aspects.  

 

A dance in a basement nightclub on Mars… or maybe one in the centre of your psyche (or perhaps more accurately Shane Embury’s psyche). Judging by this collection, there’s plenty more gold to be mined. 

 

Buy the album here:
https://store.consouling.be/products/title-vitriol-yellow 

 

9 / 10
TOM OSMAN
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