Dose of Psicological Illness

In spite of the fact that the Venezuelan duo Desolated Souls have been around for nearly a decade, it was this year that they put out their first release, Dose of Psicological Illness. And although all albums require repeated exposure before one can truly appreciate them completely, this album in particular required much more than a cursory listen before it was clear to me what they were doing. It was only after having listened to it several times that I found a rather compelling sonic portrait buried underneath all the muddy guitars.

At first, I found most of the album to be generic, repetitive, and unoriginal. The percussion was just an endless stream of cymbals and snare it seemed. It wasn't bad, but I certainly didn't see if they were bringing anything new to the table if anything at all. I listened very carefully to the riffs and came away mostly nonplussed; the majority of them were simplistic and it didn't seem like very much effort had been put into writing anything memorable. Add to that the ever-so-slightly out-of-tune guitars used for the chord arpeggios and I was left scratching my head as to what they were trying to do. To be sure, I did pick up on the haunting atmosphere that they did a wonderful job of creating, but atmosphere is cheap nowadays, and I wanted something deeper to sink my teeth into.

But in the end, it was their haunting atmosphere that finally won me over. But I don't want to give you the idea that this is in any way similar to the brand of atmospheric black metal that has become so popular in recent years. This definitely an atmospheric sound, but lies far closer to Burzum than most of what you would hear labelled as atmoblack nowadays. They do have places where they move into that sound, most notably on “Living Nature” where the rhythm guitars are accompanied by higher and more melodic guitar leads, but overall they don't fit into the mould of modern atmoblack at all.

The vocals were also an immediate strong point with me, as I find the hollow delivery particularly effective. The vocalist is heavily reverbed, and his cries are distant and scratchy and this sort of execution is something I have always found perfectly fitting for this type of music. They are a bit low in the mix, but in this case I think it works well since the instrumentation is at the forefront for a reason. That brings me back to the atmosphere once again and I have to say that I think this is their greatest strength. The riffs seemed repetitive and pedestrian to me because in and of themselves, they really don't offer much, but in the greater context of the album, they form the backdrop for a powerful and heavily-layered tapestry of emptiness and desperation. During my final listen, even the off-key arpeggios that annoyed me early on began to fit in with the greater picture.

I'm not going to suggest any highlight tracks to listen to because the album is short enough and can be listened to in its entirety in less than a half an hour. Besides, I think that isolating an individual track would take away from how I think the artists intended this album to be experienced: as a complete picture of your consciousness in the void of any empty and boundless vacuum.

Originally written for fetiddead.wordpress.com.