A new album release from Society of the Silver Cross delivers a very vast and cinematic soundscape that leans on an almost gothic undertone and spiritual overtone that all come together to create an atmosphere that you fall into very quickly and easily built with lush instrumentation and a deepening in almost ethereal tonality.
The Festival of Invocations album is indeed something that serves as almost an escape as it has the ability to pull you away from your surroundings and put you in this completely different place all together and as it builds, you start to become more and more attached to the sort of occult metal undertone that the songs deliver still without even being super heavy.
This record is engulfing and all the best ways possible and they're able to build the soundscape with layers of vocals, harmonies, acoustic guitars, live percussion, and so much more that really take you deeper into the story to the point where as you listen through the record, you start to feel like this is an actual concept album.
These songs do interconnect in different ways and even if I'm wrong about the concept album part, this is an album that you should be listening to from beginning to end.
Listening to one or two tracks off this record will give you a little bit of a glimpse of what you can expect but it's not giving you anywhere near the full spectrum of what the full album has to offer.
These songs are vast and expansive. They create progressive and ambient layers of texture that completely complement each other the entire time but as this happens you also get pulled into this almost dreamlike state.
This is because again, there is a vast sort of spaciousness to this record and it feels like you're sitting there watching a live performance but it's out somewhere in the middle of the woods.
I absolutely adore this vibe because it's so refreshing and rich with a certain kind of mixture of cultures.
The combination of keys, organs, and that really thick and lush sounding acoustic guitar which I'm assuming is a 12-string at least some of the time, really brings everything together in such a forward-moving flow and it does indeed have the ability to put you in a sort of state of trance.
The vocals are almost used as just instruments themselves and there are tracks where both male and female vocalists perform octaves with each other and those come through so thick and robust.
All of these elements add to the atmosphere this record delivers and it does indeed have the sort of thing that lets the notes, the music, and the textures swim around in the air that surrounds you.
You can certainly tell there was a lot of attention to detail when creating this record because it does have a very specific aesthetic that it delivers in that it has an edgy underbelly with a spiritual and a cold sort of overtone but it also embodies these floating and dreamlike sounds and you end up floating right alongside these songs most of the time.
By the end of the record, you're washed away with everything and you have to snap yourself back to reality again.
It's been a long time since I've heard a record that serves as this much of a great escape and it was refreshing, rejuvenating, full of character, and just completely full-bodied, and for me, was more of an experience than just a record.
I would definitely suggest listening to this entire record and doing so with headphones on so you could really soak in everything that's going on throughout these songs. Some notes float throughout the ether of certain tracks, there are deepening tones to others, and the best way to soak all this stuff in is to do it with headphones.
Dive into this album as soon as you can and see how it affects you.
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