Shards of Silver Fade

This is fucking long. I didn't even think it was possible for an album to be this large in scope, but even though the runtime is the same as it is on Funerals From the Astral Sphere, the songs have been stuffed into even bigger packages this time around. Honestly, even albums over an hour in general are hard to sit through in one go. Even though Dis Pater filled up all the space he could on two full discs last time he wanted to REALLY go all out for this one. This time, though, it's gone too far. The intro to the album (consisting mostly of choral singing and twinkly keyboards) is longer, in itself, than any individual track off of Funerals. It's like Dis Pater is having a dick-measuring contest with himself and how superficially epic he can make his music: "you thought the last album was ethereal and long-winded? Well check THIS shit out!"

Holy dick, there are just way too many keyboard sections that float around forever and ever. Sure, they change shape, but they do so at the pace of a goddamn cloud. Funerals was certainly repetitive and long-winded in his own right (this guy just seems determined to fill up all 2.5 hours of the CDs). It's not like what he's doing is bad musically either, which kind of makes it even more frustrating. Funerals From the Astral Sphere was long as fuck, too, but that album was sixteen tracks of shorter, more focused songs, some of which were bite-sized pieces that function well enough on their own, so you can listen to a few tracks and come back later. That's not really the case for Shards of Silver Fade, this was obviously composed with the intent of being something you need to listen to from beginning to end as this all-encompassing monolith. I'm not trying to make it seem like my attention span is hella short or that albums with a scope as large as this are inherently bad, but really, how often are you going to have the time to just sit down and listen to this all the way through? Road trips, maybe?

Still, I wouldn't want to discourage you from checking this out. Once things actually do pick up and start going somewhere, this is genuinely very good, bordering on excellent. In bits and pieces, this might even be better then Funerals in certain aspects. He's kept the same aesthetic of super dreamy black metal with a haze of keyboards drifting about, but the sound is much more full in many aspects and the production quality is better; dude's getting the whole "one man band" thing down pretty well, his programmed kit sounds more natural and the keyboard and the guitars are balanced nicely, without one infringing on the other's personal space. At the core, most of the ideas presented on this album are pretty great. It's just a goddamn shame they're repeated so many fucking times! Even the best moments on Shards of Silver Fade wear out their welcome. There comes a point where you don't really need to hear the same riff repeated AGAIN with a another vocal choir overtop. I get that Dis Pater probably wants to get everything he can out of the ideas he presents, but given the somewhat minimal and atmospheric nature of the music the ideas do get stretched a bit too thin. I don't know if it's a result of the more longwinded approach, but the standalone keyboard sections seem less engaging than they were before.

I didn't want this review to be several paragraphs of me saying "this is too long", but that's really the only reason why I don't enjoy this album very much despite all the right elements being in place. I'm not even saying this album should have been significantly shorter, because I understand this is the kind of music that requires a bit of atmosphere-building and slow evolution of themes, which often necessitates longer song lengths. All I'm suggesting is that if, like, one or two repetitions of each riff were cut out, Shards of Silver Fade would be half an hour shorter and I guarantee nobody would notice. I love repetitive black metal like Burzum and Drudkh, but both of those bands seem to know how long a riff should repeat before it overstays its welcome, which is what makes them so great in the first place. Midnight Odyssey has some beautiful riffs and melodies, but the songwriting just isn't there yet. You could see this a little bit on Funerals, but any excessive repetition was kind of an afterthought because of how great the riffs were, but the "big picture" approach of Shards makes for fewer standout moments.

I suppose there are a couple of things unrelated to the glacial pace of this album that I would tweak. I went back and listened to Funerals from the Astral Sphere to get a bit of a refresh on how it stacks up, and I was immediately immersed in the energy that "Fallen from Firmament" hits you with. Fuck, that is an awesome track. As close as Shards of Silver Fade gets, I feel like the more balanced sounds I was mentioning earlier kind of negate the album's ability to reach some truly lofty emotional heights. In essence, Shards of Silver Fade is like two hours of build with no climax. Sure, there's a couple of moments where they come close, and the ride is somewhat enjoyable, but it seems like way too much focus was put on being "epic" where every moment hints at something huge coming up, but that huge thing never really happens. All in all, this is a bit of a disappointment from a band who was verging on being one of my favorites in atmospheric black metal before this release.