XLP Review: "V-Oceans" by Slow

V-Oceans

Groundswells of emotion are hard to take.

Like the Butthole Surfers said, it's pouring like an avalanche and it's comin' down the mountain.

When bleakness hits for me, it often feels like snow is falling all around me. Snow is the perfect metaphor for blackness, because to survive, you literally have to claw your way out.

Self-medication will always come into play here. That's not to say it's all booze and pills to fix problems, but we all have to find the spark that returns us to ourselves.

Music has always been a very cathartic experience for me because it's able to enhance, change, or simply alter my moods. Mood swings, though hopefully not outwardly apparent, have long been something that affects me.

Slow

In attempts to leave patterns behind, it appears that I've acquired a brand new pattern:

One man atmospheric bands, and Slow is like the previous ones we've discussed.

First of all, the music lives up to the billing. These are not fast moving tracks.

There are five tracks on this 55 minute album. Each one of them is filled to the brim with pomp and circumstance.

There's a constant build up from the first note to the ringing last.

Like much of the atmospheric world of metal, these songs are reminiscent of each other to the point where it blissfully feels like a single song.

There's also enough of a difference in them to keep the listener interested. It even gets a bit symphonic at times.

Both keyboard and piano lines keep the songs from becoming overly monotonous and musical. It's easy to fall into the trap of leaving out the melody in this genre.

This album is an avalanche from the first snowball to the final sweeping destruction. Picture the final, horrifying scenes of a deadly avalanche.

Take that mental image and back all the way up to the point when a leaf falls leading to the cascade. Once you have that picture, slowly (and we mean SLOWLY) begin to move the picture along until you return to the bottom of the mountain and the destroyed town.

That's V-Oceans by Slow.

Release: 1/26/18

Genre: Atmospheric Funeral Doom Metal (blackened of course)

Label: code666

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