Sleeping Ancient - There Is No Truth but Death

Angry Metal Guy

Very few days are monochromatic. For every yin, there’s a yang. The day you get promoted at work is the day your beloved pet dies. The day the attractive girl (or boy) rejects your advances is the day your brother gets engaged. Even something as simple as white-hot fury is, if examined truthfully, usually mixed with at least a healthy dollop of sadness. It is for this reason that music that captures different tones and moods feels more authentic than that which simply focuses on one emotion. From an artistic perspective, however, tone is tricky, especially when you’re creating art with vastly different tones. Get it right, and the differing perspectives will complement each other to create a realistic and relatable portrait. Get it wrong, and the audience feels jarred and disorientated. Enter Texan quartet, Sleeping Ancient, who attempt to navigate the fine line by using the slow build of post-metal to enhance the fury of black metal. The cover art, with its cubist-like shifting perspectives, and various (fifty?) shades of grey, suggests they are trying to capture different perspectives AND different hues of anger. It’s wonderfully ambitious. But do we have a consistent masterpiece on our hands, like Isis’s Oceanic, or a tonal disaster, like The Last Jedi?

Sleeping Ancient has been together for over a decade, and while it’s not easy to pinhole, one categorization the band easily defies is “prolific.” There Is No Truth but Death is the band’s first full album, following 2016’s EP The Seer. These guys play a form of post-metal which melds the broad, sweeping instrumentals of Isis with the more immediate black metal sound of traditional second-wave acts. There’s also a healthy dollop of doom, particularly in the oppressive aura which surrounds the album. For a debut, such diversity is very impressive, but that’s fortunately not the only thing Truth has going for it.

There Is No Truth But Death by Sleeping Ancient

Sleeping Ancient sounds like a band that has been together for a while; they play with the confidence of musicians who intrinsically understand each other. There Is No Truth but Death melds its many influences together so confidently that it never feels as if the band is losing its tight rein on proceedings. Take “Writhing in the City of Dregs,” for example. Blast beats and tremolos introduce the song before seamlessly transitioning to a slower, more doom-like pace. It then builds to a massive, and thoroughly earned post-metal climax in the vein of Sannhet or Russian Circles. It’s tight and focused and one of the best songs of the year. It’s also not the only song that shows off this impressive eclecticism and control. “Akeru” combines the furious howls of Rory Alhquist with the patient build-up one expects from veterans of mood and dynamism. The result is spell-binding and compelling.

The big problem comes with handling the necessary shifts between all the different styles. The calmer, more meditative parts of the album — while always lovely — lack the momentum, and riffs, of the more aggressive stretches. This results in the tone of the album feeling occasionally unbalanced. “Taphephobic Hallucinations,” for example, veers wildly between an ethereal, almost hopeful, opening passage and a furious and bleak denouement. While both parts work individually, the shift is not handled smoothly and is therefore jarring. The calm moments, while not dull per se (except occasionally, as in “A Locked Room”), sometimes feel that way when juxtaposed with the intense and compelling black metal passages. In various parts of the album this highlights that rather than combining harmoniously, the differing elements occasionally seem to battle each other.

I feel like I’ve been harsh on There Is No Truth but Death, and many will find much to enjoy. For large parts of its run-time, it fills the post-metal-but-still-angry void left by Isis and other great bands. For a debut, it’s extremely strong, and I’m genuinely excited to see where they go from here. The transitions could be smoother, the meditative parts need buffing up, and the band needs to settle on a more singular tonal vision, but the basics are in place. You heard it here first: Sleeping Ancient will truly ascend with LP2. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait another 10 years for it.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Viridian Flame Records
Websites: sleepingancient.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/sleepingancient
Releases Worldwide: September 6th, 2019

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