Stormcrowfleet
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| Studio album by Skepticism | ||||
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Publication |
1995 |
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| Label (s) | Red Stream | |||
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Title (number) |
6th |
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running time |
57:17 |
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Skepticism |
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Stormcrowfleet is the first album by the Finnish band Skepticism . It is considered to be one of the most important publications for the emergence of Funeral Doom and, in retrospect, is named as essential for the spread of the genre and the establishment of the style name.
Emergence
Skepticism, which was founded in 1991, found a constant line-up in 1993 and in the same year won a recording contract with the American independent label Red Stream due to the demo Aeothe Kaear . The band then recorded three new pieces and rearranged three pieces from the demo.
Keyboardist Eero Pöyry describes his change from guitar to keyboard as a decisive moment in their genesis of style, accompanied by the consideration of how the instrument should be integrated into the sound of the band from now on. Following the idea of playing the keyboard as a synthetic organ , the drummer Lasse Pelkonen also adapted his equipment and playing style. Among other things, from then on he used felt mallets instead of the drum sticks common in metal . In another interview, he described this and how the band found an independent, sacred sound as an intuitive process.
“The variation of the instruments can be described as organic. We didn't have a pre-determined plan of how we would sound or what we would do. We worked very intuitively. It took us a year to find our sound and our roles. So I wouldn't say that we were dissatisfied with the previous sound - we were just incomplete. "
Typical of the band's phase was meanwhile the daily rehearsals with the idea of breaking away from classic metal bands. The band members channeled ideas and influences from their previous musical career and their musical socialization in the creation of the album into a creative basic structure, which, according to Pöyry, could henceforth be regarded as the basis of their further work. For the recordings, the group acted with bassist J. Korpihete, who, however, did not become part of the band. Pöyry explicitly referred to corpihete as a “session member” whose participation in the process of creating the album beyond the recording of the instrument included an involvement in the design process of the album, but was only a temporary solution.
Album information
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The album, first released in 1995, contains six separate pieces that have a total playing time of 57:19 minutes. The album was re-released several times. The band jointly took on the graphic preparation of the accompanying material. At the time of recording, the group consisted of singer Matti Tilaeus, keyboardist Eero Pöyry, guitarist Jani Kekarainen and drummer Lasse Pelkonen. The bassist J. Korpihete was involved in the recordings as a guest musician.
publication
Stromcrowfleet was first released in 1995 via Red Stream, initially the album was only released on a CD format. The album was first released with six separate tracks and a playing time of 57:19 minutes. No changes were made to this extent of the album in later editions. Additional bonus material was not added either.
The first re-releases of the album still kept the format as CD. The album was first released in a vinyl version in 2018 via Svart Records . In 2017 the band bought the master tapes and was looking for a cooperation partner and a studio to release the recordings in a vinyl format for the first time. For the release as a double vinyl album, which was released in 2018, the tapes were remixed in the Finnish Astia studios using high-quality analog technology, but the band made no changes to the original recordings of the pieces. In discussions, the revision was cited as a significant improvement in sound quality. Pöyry described this improvement in a statement about the album as the intention of the re-release.
“It's not just a vinyl version, it's a completely new mix of the original recordings. However, we didn't add or change anything - the goal was simply to edit the album again with better and more modern equipment. "
Further re-releases were taken over by various international companies. In addition to those already mentioned, the Russian label Irond Ltd. and the UK's Peaceville Records re-releases out.
layout
As with some of the group's later releases, the cover of the album was illustrated by a close-up of an object. Unlike the later photographs of Rauch on Farmakon or a suit on Ordeal , the motif can not be clearly identified in the picture alone. The photographs of twigs and water surfaces in the same color used inside the booklet indicate a corresponding object. The picture shows shapes in a reddish to yellow-orange color on a black background. The texts of the pieces are printed inside the booklet. The back of the album is illustrated by the photo of the reflections of a water surface. The pictures were all selected by the band under the self-designation as Lihtede Group. The graphic preparation was taken over by the design studio Arts Industria.
style
The music presented on Stormcrowfleet has been described by reviewers as the reversal of Extreme Metal . The transported atmosphere is mostly described as morbid and sad. In addition, attributes such as Ice Age, cave-like, narcotic, hypnotic or meditative are assigned to the music.
To do this, the band combine the cracking, heavy sound of the guitar playing, which is cultivated in extreme metal, with slow tempo and the "hypnotically sad sounds of a creepy church organ." The music stands out from Death Doom and Gothic Metal "through the even slower and at the same time orchestral arrangement". The band exchanged “brutality and technical complexity typical of Death Metal for narcotically slow guitar riffs and drums”.
Accordingly, the band reduced the sound to a heavy, distorted, but very slow guitar playing, a dark sounding and equally slow drums and a dominant organ sound, which partly takes on the function of a lead instrument , and soft growling .
perception
reception
In the reviews that appeared after its initial release, the album received a mixed response. While some reviewers already touted Stormcrowfleet as an upcoming classic, it received disparaging ratings elsewhere.
It was only after the genre became more widespread that Stormcrowfleet became more of an issue in the international metal press. So the album is ascribed high quality in and equally high importance for Doom Metal as a whole and the subgenre Funeral Doom in particular. The Decibel Magazine introduced it in 2014 on the 25th place of the 100 top doom metal album of all time . In many reviews that were written for re-releases of the album, he was awarded the status of a classic and genre pioneer of Funeral Doom.
Meaning in the genre
The music journalist Scott Koerber described Stormcrowfleet in a review written for Decibel Magazine as such an emphatic departure from Death Doom that it made it necessary to dub it Funeral Doom. In various reviews that appeared in particular for the re-releases of the album, the importance of the album for the spread of the genre was mostly emphasized.
"While your compatriots from Thergothon might push open the door with the legendary Stream from the Heavens , it was Skepticism who stepped through and stepped on another level in a shadow dimension of the then extreme metal."
The label Red Stream provided Stormcrowfleet like the previously released demo Aeother Kaear with a sticker that labeled the album with the term Funeral Doom. In general, the first publication is therefore also responsible for establishing and spreading the genre name. The music journalist Christian Hector of the German music magazine Metal Hammer estimated that Skepticism and Thergothon had released the first real Funeral Doom albums. With Stormcrowfleet, Skepticism released the first pure Funeral Doom album. The album is considered a blueprint for later genre representatives such as Shape of Despair , Pantheist and Worship .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Recital. Skepticism, 2015, archived from the original on February 28, 2019 ; accessed on November 14, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d e f Jon Rosenthal: The March and the Stream: Skepticism Revisits The Re-Mixed “Stormcrowfleet”. Invisible Oranges, October 9, 2018, archived from the original on October 12, 2019 ; accessed on October 30, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d e f Heiko: Interview with Skepticism. Doom-Metal.com, April 13, 2003, archived from the original on September 23, 2010 ; accessed on October 30, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c Samoth: Skepticism: Stormcrowfleet. grimgent.com, October 27, 2018, archived from the original on November 18, 2019 ; accessed on November 18, 2019 .
- ↑ andrea: SKEPTICISM: “Stormcrowfleet” appears as a remix. Vampster, August 30, 2018; archived from the original on November 18, 2019 ; accessed on November 18, 2019 .
- ↑ a b KwonVerge: Skepticsm: Stormcrowfleet. Metalstorm, December 15, 2012, archived from the original on October 1, 2015 ; accessed on November 18, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d e f Scott Koerber: Skepticsm: Stormcrowfleet. Decibel, March 5, 2014, accessed November 18, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d Stephan Rajchl: Skepticsm: Stormcrowfleet. Metal1.info, February 15, 2019, accessed November 18, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d chris: Skepticsm: Stormcrowfleet. Amboss Mag, October 19, 2018, accessed November 18, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Andrew Bonacelli: Skepticism: Stormcrowfleet . In: Decibel . 2014, ISSN 1557-2137 , p. 31 .
- ↑ Ryan George: Skepticsm: Stormcrowfleet. Moshpit Nation, November 11, 2018, accessed November 18, 2019 .
- ↑ Leon: Skepticsm: Stormcrowfleet. Metalutopia, October 23, 2018, accessed November 18, 2019 .
- ↑ Christian Hector: Funeral in E minor . In: Metal Hammer . September 2008, p. 104 f .