Thanatos Sonata

It took me far too long to realize that the title of Thanatos Sonata was basically just a play with letters, and it then took me far too long to realize that it wasn’t a palindrome or anything like that. I guess it just sounded interesting, and that kind of goes for the song as well. Certainly an experimental piece, though with some intrinsic musical merit, this single didn’t need to approach 15 minutes in length to make its point, though it maintains its own sense of atmosphere throughout that duration.

The main section of ‘Thanatos Sonata’ is made up of two kinds of guitar motif, one of which is possibly the most distorted ball of fuzz this side of Buzz Osborne’s hair and the other of which reminds me of a certain guitar tone that bands like Incubus and Limp Bizkit used to use in the more funk-oriented verses of their songs. Of course, this doesn’t actually sound like those bands playing, though I could readily imagine Wes Borland or somone coming up with that repeated riff, since it sets up a slightly weird yet cool feel that is then slashed across by the screaming shards of the other guitar. When a deep voiceover begins to narrate something I can’t catch behind all that, the whole thing has a nice sinister tension to it that feels pretty enjoyable. However, unlike most of AD’s longer songs, nothing else really happens for the duration, except that the pieces of the composition get removed one by one and we are left with the same windy drone or distortion as in the beginning. That could be the sound of life happening in a car park, if I’m making any sense of what’s behind the noise.

As such, Thanatos Sonata doesn’t actually end up very weird by AD standards, just jamming on that same cool idea for a while, sounding slightly otherworldly all the time. It also has probably the best cover art of all the band's releases. And, despite my growing expectations for something weird from this project, I think I’ll take a single otherworldly cool idea with interesting artwork for now.