Rare Field Ceiling

Yellow Eyes' fourth album Immersion Trench Reverie was one of my black metal highlights of 2017, so I was pretty excited for the follow up. Rare Field Cieling (what does that even mean lol) is a much thicker mixture of dissonance than its predecessor. While it's a good effort, I can't help but be left a bit cold, if only because of the weight of expectations. Rare Field Ceiling eschews the alpine atmosphere that kept me coming back to Immersion Trench Reverie. While I've enjoyed it each time I've listened to it, this one hasn't become a staple in my black metal listening diet the way its predecessor has.

The Skarstad brothers, who lead the band, have said that leading up to the album there have been a series of devastating health crises in their family (God, I wish that wasn't so relatable), and that it couldn't help but have a big impact on the album. I think this makes a lot of sense. While you still have some subtle melody, as well as samples of bells, women's choirs and the like, this is a much darker album than Immersion Trench Reverie. The production is intentionally rough and muddy and they lean much harder on their dissonant side than their melodic one. While Immersion Trench Reveries brought to mind images of forests and mountaintops, Rare Ceiling Fan almost has the atmosphere of an industrial wasteland. Actually, it reminds me a lot of the movie Stalker where it's still in sepia and they're sneaking through the industrial section leading up to the zone.

Yellow Eyes have long had an obscure streak, but I find the song titles to be particularly amusing here. With song titles like "Light Delusion Curtain" and "Nutrient Painting", thematically they can be as obscure as the music sometimes proves to be. The production here is raw and muddy, the songs structures atypical and everything kind of congeals into this thick, molassesy stream of dissoanance. We do have some off-kilter melody penetrating the murk, and it's a welcome inclusion. Mike is as good as always on the drums, and the rasps are strong and pained. The album is a very dreary affair that kind of ends up blurring into one experience, rather than there being standout songs.

It's pretty funny that one of the brothers takes on gigs like making commercial Christmas music for Reese Peanut Butter Cups commercials. The swirling shroud of dissonance that comprises Rare Ceiling Fan is about as far away from that world as you can get. While this does not reach the towering alpine peaks of Immersion Trench Reverie, it is still a welcome addition to the Yellow Eyes discography. Featuring a much more dreary and opaque vibe, it is good at what it does an still one of the stronger black metal albums I've heard out of 2019.

I liked their previous effort, Immersion Trench Reverie well enough to be excited for this release. I'm not familiar with any of their previous releases but it looks like they have been quite prolific. Five full-lengths in seven years is an impressive schedule. I have no comment on fatigue or a decrease in quality being I've only listened to the two most recent but they are both about on the same level except for one, massive glaring obstacle.

The production. I'm actually amazed with how bad it is. At first I was listening to this album in my car on the physical CD version and messed with my audio settings to no avail (my 2017 Subaru Crosstrek has a decent stock sound system). I decided to then stream it from my desk my pretty nice over-ear headphones to see if that makes much of a difference. Still the same. The vocals are so drowned out at some points you can't distinguish them. Once the singing ends at 0:10 on the title track, "Rare Field Ceiling", you can hear ever-so-slight vocals but are nearly inaudible. Not only that but the sound quality sounds terrible. The higher sections sound like it was recorded analog. If that was the case, then cool, but this sounds terrible from a digital recording. It would be an odd choice for a band with a sound like this to try to go analog.

The writing is about on par with Immersion Trench Reverie. It's a unique sound that is sometimes a little experimental in the execution. "Rare Field Ceiling" at 6:06 has an extremely unique composition where the guitars ring high and just bide their time while the drums are blasting away. Overall it's very ambient with a great job at setting the somber mood, though less than their previous release. It's also interesting that most all of the songs have a wildly different outro that has a different theme. The first song has wind chimes and some form of what sounds like an Asian stringed instrument, next we get that instrument with a foreign language chant/sing, then a bigger version of the wind chimes and string instrument with synth now, then Himalayan throat singing. "Maritime Flair" brings it all back with a little of all of it for an album outro.

I like the vocals quite a bit more than on their previous effort (I'm not sure how they've changed prior to that release). Before the vocals leaned a little hard core. Very high, but reminded me of that genre. That is all gone here, now if only I could hear them clearly. The aforementioned poor production only adds more sameness to the already monotonous vocal style. The drums are fairly standard and nothing really was catching my ear in that department.

The song names are uncomfortable. Maybe it's just me but they are an enigma in themselves. "Nutrient Painting"? Painting with nutrients? A painting of nutrients? "Rare Field Ceiling"? Does the field have a ceiling? Yes, I'd agree it's rare, because I've never seen a field ceiling. They let the mind's eye wander making sense of the picture and meaning. Speaking of song names, what is up with using the term "Maritime" in metal? Does it have some other awesome meaning other than relating to the sea? The Ruins of Beverast have a song called "Surtur Barbaar Maritime" and Augury has "Maritime". Like I've seen it too many times throughout the last year. Odd.

There's a lot of dissonant sections and melodic parts, sometimes at the same time from the guitar work. This creates a cacophony of sound that can be an uneasy listen but I like it for the most part because there's still rhyme to the reason. The leads are actually interesting for a genre like this. Most of the leads on "No Dust" are all quite interesting. The riff at 0:45 on the title track is another ear worm. It even has some hard-plucked acoustic guitar sections that are uniquely employed. Normally in extreme metal there are designated sparse sections where the acoustic comes out to play. Here it is incorporated with the whole. Not in-your-face (like that could happen here!). Listen to 1:32 on "Light Delusion Curtain" for a treat on bass while the guitar is resting. Also, check the absolute hammering at the start of "Nutrient Painting". The bass makes the first half of the song. There are a few other tricks in this bassists playbook that can be found.

Favorite tracks:
-No Dust
-Rare Field Ceiling
-Light Delusion Curtain

Technical Skill: 73% Song writing: 81% Production: 18% Originality: 67%