Evergreen Refuge

Evergreen Refuge is a one-man atmospheric / folk / post-rock black metal project based in Colorado that aims to capture the feeling and ambience of being fully absorbed in the natural environment of ER man Dylan Rupe's home state. All the music he composes for his albums is instrumental. The self-titled first album is as good a place to begin the musical journey with ER: as some of the track titles suggest, "Evergreen Refuge" is a flight from the demands and strains of Western post-industrial / post-capitalist society. The album also serves as the beginning of an odyssey to rediscover one's life destiny and to know genuine happiness, as distinct from the hedonistic material happiness peddled by modern capitalism which promises a great deal but whose deliveries are spiritually empty and give only temporary satisfaction.

Overall the self-titled album is a mellow, soulful and reflective if dark recording. There's not a lot of black metal (limited mainly to bass rhythm grind to drive the songs and bulk them up) and most of the music is better described as atmospheric melodic post-rock. While the music is constructed very well, the fact that it lacks lyrics and has very few melodies that sustain over long sections of individual tracks (some of which are very long - at least three tracks are over the 10-minute mark) means that for some listeners the album might appear incomplete. The tracks depend on a great deal of space throughout to achieve the introspective moods required by the album's themes but long moments of silence can give them a fragmented or disconnected impression. The pace is very slow and rarely changes, and that may be another frustration for listeners to deal with.

Curiously for a recording of its kind and with the ambitions it has, the tracks near the end don't seem any happier or more hopeful than the ones near the beginning. I see this as a problem related to the structure of the tracks and their reliance on space, emptiness and silence to create a mood suitable for meditation. The music near the end should conclude the album on a note that encourages listeners to anticipate what the follow-up album might be like. While the last track does start well, it seems to lose focus during its length and the energy level flags.

The best tracks are those that feature some black metal rhythm sections - when ER does black metal, he does it really well: it's heavy grinding music with a lot of distortion and it has a real drive and aggression - and parts of the final track "A Daydream".

This is a recording that should be heard as one work though at 46 minutes it's fairly long for what it is. Individual tracks are not distinct from one another; they are all linked anyway so the lack of separate identities for them is not such a big deal. It does mean though that for people who do not know Evergreen Refuge and who might be interested in hearing the project's output, they should start their journey with some of the act's later albums and learn something of its aims. Only when they understand what ER is trying to achieve, can they give this debut a work-out and appreciate what it aims to do in spite of its flaws.