Chances are, by now, you’ll already have an opinion on Summoning, one way or another. They’ve been around long enough and have a dedicated enough fan base that someone will have recommended them to you. They also seem to be a divisive lot, with reviews and comments ranging from epic platitudes to straight-up dislike. Chances are Old Morning’s Dawn (Napalm Records) won’t change your opinion, falling into the “second verse, same as the first”, or “seventh album, same as the first, fourth, sixth…” category.
Unlike marmite (I’m definitely in the hate camp), Old Morning’s Dawn kinda leaves me on the fence. Or at least leaning against it, but on the negative side. At times, it stirs, evoking the atmosphere of Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings soundtrack (ish). At times it disappears into stultifying background dreariness. The ever contentious keyboard-played drums at times provide a sparse appropriate background, at others sound cheap, digital and out of place, and the constant mix of an organic aim with (what must be intentionally) inorganic sounds does grate, many of the keyboard tones evoking the cheap Casio bent of Burzum’s Daudri Baldrs failure.
But then there’s a ‘Caradhas’ with triumphant synths parping in the foreground while riffless guitar noise drifts in and out behind them; a Dune-esque leitmotif dances in around the 3rd minute mark, melodies seguing well with the guitars. Or an ‘Earthshrine’, which does bring the album nicely to a close, and builds from a sparse piano intro into a cleverly understated male voice choir and proud brass instruments.
But therein lays the problem, too. For ‘Earthshrine’ is, like the majority of its counterparts, nine minutes long. And the bookending peaks sandwich five minute long tedious valleys of meandering parps and swathes, and that is the theme of much of the album.
It isn’t an atmospheric work, it is 66 minutes of intermittent swells amongst a tide of dreary, and the much of the album passes by in the background time after time, with a lack of drum beat or identifiable song, as most of the offerings here are interchangeable. Indeed, most of the parts of each offering are too. Devin Townsend once declared Life Is All Dynamics. Old Morning’s Dawn is sorely lacking in life, all or dynamics.
6/10
Steve Tovey