Ruins of Resurrection

At first I found this split album unusual: the Finnish duo Circle of Ouroborus play an eccentric garage-punk form of black metal with a very dark urban-blues vibe and the band Crooked Necks perform what seems initially a very clean-sounding melodic pop-rock. Listening closer, the two bands turn out to be very complementary: Crooked Necks appear to have a very slight BM influence in the use of harsh croaking vocals as a major sound element in their music, though it is very distant in the mix and could almost be mistaken for static or a sort of atmospheric mist; and Circle of Ouroborus have been moving away from black metal to something more Gothic with mostly clean vocals. The black metal influence in CoO's music is limited to shaky bass rumble, a hard steaming buzzy edge to the guitars and lo-fi production. It's likely also that both bands share a love of old 1980s bands like Joy Division - CoO did after all do a cover of Joy Division's "She's Lost Control" on an early album and the vocalist's style is reminiscent of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis and also of another famous English singer Mark E Smith who rose to fame with The Fall - and though I'd never heard of Crooked Necks before finding this album, I'm aware they have been compared to The Cure, another famous '80s band.

CoO offer six short songs (by their standards) on this split. A couple of songs are hardly more than exercises in playing particular rhythm loops or basic melodies, or in establishing a certain mood. One song "The Resurrection" relies almost entirely on a repeating loop of three descending chords to hold together the vocals, thumping drums and the dark atmosphere. The riff at first reminded me of another CoO song, "Dead Eyes, Dead Soul" from the band's "Tree of Knowledge" album but the two songs are actually not alike in structure: it was the similar brooding atmosphere that got the memory cells spiking. Both "The Resurrection" and another song "Rebirth", a very short piece, hint at a more experimental side to CoO. Later songs on the split, "Gate of Unlight" and "When the Divine Eye Sleeps", point in a slight post-rock melodic direction for the band but, as a group, the six songs are representative of CoO's style. "The Resurrection" does stand out for its spare, fragmented structure but apart from that track, the songs don't depart very much from the song-based melodic garage rock standard with the buzzy sound and the out-of-tune singing. There are not even any acoustic songs.

The five tracks by Crooked Necks present as fairly energetic, even urgent pieces with a lot of melody and a clean, sparkling sound. They can be said to be instrumental: the vocals are significant but mainly as a sound element that distinguishes the band's style as something more than just pleasant if slightly melancholy indie rock. The music is spare: the bass guitar has a very clear, smooth sound beneath the doleful pure guitar tones and the slightly dulled percussion. Only the raspy vocals, thrashing about like an angry caged ghost when they're not sharing space with clean muttered voices, hint at a possible underground Metal influence. The best tracks in Crooked Necks' half of the album are "Ruining You", featuring some howling anguished guitar against rhythms that occasionally get stodgy but which vary enough that the track as a whole doesn't bog down; and "Poisoning the Seed" which has a rhythm that alternates between punchiness and liquid flow while little guitar notes flutter above. "Nothing was ever there" is also not a bad track: it has some good passages in the middle and towards the end where the music really fires up and the texture becomes abrasive and hard-edged.

On the whole this split album is not a bad release but it's not really remarkable either. It's best viewed as an introduction to two bands that initially don't seem to have much in common but may turn out to have similar influences and concerns. The mood across the bands' music is definitely quite uneasy mood music that hints at anguish about modern life and existence. It's possible the bands are playing a little safe here to appeal to an audience not familiar with their work already. CoO's contribution gives a few hints of what the band is capable of while Crooked Necks have an energy and at the same time a clean sparkling yet doleful quality that might appeal to fans of French black metal / shoegazer band Alcest.