Sfumato

In order to avoid a fruitless lurking along the shoreline of stylistic classification, I would like to say here that Quercus is one of those bands that see the world differently compared with anybody else, which means that these Czech musicians just physically cannot write the music for a wide auditory of music admirers. Moreover, here, it is without even mentioning the popularity of closest stylistic tag, known as doom metal.


Believed to be active since 2001, “the oak people” have their two full-length albums to date, with the latest released by MFL records in 2014. Starting from the first second, the album introduces the familiar melodic thinking of Quercus, which may already be familiar to the listener after their 2007 debut full-length. A combination of clean tone guitar lines, backed by the distorted ones, with simplistic rhythm section patterns creates a dry, but deeply melancholic atmosphere, where a subdued vocal manner and slow guitar solos together add deeper perspective to the whole impression. All of that matured very well and introduced in a power of an improved sound production, bringing out new heights and unexpected but pleasant turns in their musical adventures. Since long ago, the “avant-garde” tag has been following Quercus for their unusual approach to doom metal, but I would doubt the validity of such a conception by replacing it for an apparent open-mindedness of the musicians that should have been a golden template for anyone who started creating music back in the early days. “Sfumato” in its turn presents an absolute example of independent release in terms of style, time and even space.


The first two tracks express the aggressive, dark side of the “sfumato” painting, which we can see on the front cover, crushing the listener with double guitar layers of distorted insanity and up-tempo drumming, brilliantly binding the sheer attack manner with melancholic, desperate narrations and slow-paced, but pulsed guitar riffs. Up at the middle of album, the music is slowing down and all the attempts to show anger up were left behind the nearly ambient shroud of “…Which is Lacking”, giving away only the despond howls, organ backings and beautiful guitar soloing. An interesting move of using the same bells, as in the first track, creating a haunting, fugitive impression of a frozen time, where all thoughts united into an amorphous form reading a red line of “what is next?” It gives a cool retrospective of the last thirty minutes of the album, allowing the listener to memorize the most interesting moments and feel a certain estrangement on “Mother’s Wordfall”, which stand out as the most strange track for me personally. It appeals to several different things at the same time. Due to this, it is hard to concentrate. It is not like everything before was pretty straightforward, but just a few more things to get together in order to organise it in your head. On “Night Bathing”, again the organ backing helps creating the deepest dejection of one’s collapse, where the band strikes again with the up-tempo attack, like clinging to the hope for the last one more time, finishing everything with the unexpected page break (read as “riff break”, literally).


The album overall creates an impression of a stone palace, with no windows or gates, thornset walls and sky-tall blocks, the one you may prowl around for a long time and never find the way to get inside. It takes several thoughtful listenings to overtake the subliminal distraction and find out how to get through the disguised gates into the world of Quercus and their music. Despite the fact that I may be missing some clean vocals and the cat from their previous work, I definitely put it on my list of 2014’s best albums list. The long stairs await new dwellers. Getting deeper into this album the one shall not regret the final room.