Master's Murmur

Yellow Eyes has been quite a strange name in USA black metal/blackgaze. Not nearly as popular as Deafheaven, Liturgy or Wolves in the Throne Room during their prime, the band hasn’t got much bigger with the passing of time, and with the exception of occasional touring in Europe festivals and USA, you may as well barely consider them active. I remember being hit by their 2012 debut, Silence Threads the Evening's Cloth, especially due to the use of acute, dissonant and modal-based dual guitar tremolo harmonies/blast-beating, at time tragic, at time ecstatic, but never much melodic and memorable more due to the initial impact than as everlasting melodies, something the previously cited acts delivered instead. Moreover, some of their releases (their first two and this one) have been released on cassettes and sometimes vinyl, but still not on CD, which is a sign.

Coming out four years after their previous one, the band’s 2023 album, Master’s Murmur, contains no less than three interludes that make it even shorter, as if clocking even less than its meager 32 minutes. After a weird showcase of reverb-drenched piano notes, synth howls and some noisy background guitar, the title track kick things off with flute-like A-minor/F-major arpeggios, but the first stanza goes through clean guitar arpeggios heavily filtered with delay, phaser and reverb effects with background shrieking, an approach closer to 90’s post-rock akin to Laika than their usual style. Later on, some minimal, distorted power-chords are added into repeated, complex chord progressions that change during the third minute with squealing lead guitar added before background ambience fades out.

Winter Is Looking is based on mostly beatless clean piezo guitar arpeggios, acute bass leads and ever-changing riffs based on F#/B minor harmonies with extended dissonances, and only near its end some blast-beating with more distorted power-chords (and acoustic guitar picking) are added as a coda, rather than backbone. When Jackie's Lamps Have Showed is another acoustic-arpeggios cut with melodies akin to early Mütiilation and Xasthur with added choir drones, deep bass, The Ritual Is Gone is a simple juxstaposition of calm, holy-sounding synths and choirs alternated with chaotic blast-beating and atonal whammy bar abuse with a final shrilling blackgaze coda, and the remaining cuts feature more of the same darkwave/ambient formula with more sudden chord changes (especially Tremble Blue Morning).

Like Deafheaven’s latest release, there’s very little metal here. There’s plenty of effects, digital production and fixation on cleaner post-rock (but also virtually no clean vocals). There are plenty of quieter dynamics and a more skeletal, more sparse sound mass. It feels like an experimentation without being experimental per se. For Yellow Eyes, such an attempt doesn’t damage their reputation, since they have no legacy to defend. Yes, I like it without jumping for joy for it. But at the same time, I’m not baffled by it, as if I somehow predicted Will Skarstad & co. would have tread this route, it was only a matter of when. Who knows what they may do next.