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Celestiial
"Where Life Springs Eternal" |
Decibel Magazine (Scott Seward)
A Few Years ago, Tanner Anderson, a.k.a. Celestiial, made what I feel was a small masterpiece of hushed ambient doom with his debut album, Desolate North. The striking, delicate, minimal woodland funeral doom that he conjured from birdsong and the natural world around him felt spiritually invigorating and as fresh as a blast of Midwestern winter air. Like Messiaen for metal fans.
Like-minded atavistic North American souls such as Agalloch, Blood of the Black Owl and Sapthuran also showed the world around this time that you didn't have to hail from Norway to make deep nature-soaked metal that was emotionally powerful and just flat-out compelling modern music, no matter the genres or subgenres involved. This was NEW music made from old old stuff. And Celestiial's worldview and forest-centric aesthetic seemed to coalesce around an alternate universe that would include the truly remarkable record Labels, Bindrune and God-is-Myth-and also, perhaps, two of the greatest music fanzines this nation has ever been blessed with, The Convivial Hermit and Oaken Throne.
Where Eternal differs from Desolate North somewhat is that it's more outwardly heavy. There was more help on hand (including members of Agalloch). The mood, however, is much the same. Contemplative. Slow. The birds sing. The wolves howl. This is essential music. Life music. No matter your affiliations. Did I mention that Blood of the Black Owl have a new album out? Yeah, you need that, too. Breathe deeply. Chew slowly. Take the world in and shed yourself of all the unnecessary crap that you saddle yourself with. Take a walk in the woods. 9/10
http://thewerkshed.blogspot.com
I have been waiting to hear this album for quite some time now. I enjoyed the previous full-length from Celestiial 'Desolate North' a great deal, aside from a few flaws in its presentation. Well four years and a few new band members later, we finally are presented with 'Where Life Springs Eternal'. Celestiial has definitely expanded on the ideas it was originally presenting; slow, absolutely crushing funeral doom wrapped in dense, atmospheric field recordings. The sound is quite vast and sounds as though they are performing in the middle of a forest or upon a cliff alongside a waterfall. Loads of echo and reverb coat the instrumentation, making it sound eerily distant and cavernous.
Celestiial succeed where a great deal of funeral doom bands fail. The atmosphere is believable and incredibly encompassing. You simply do not listen to this album, it sucks you in and transports you to an endless void, until the voyage comes to a somber end. Its almost like witnessing tectonic plates shift right before you. The vocals are strangled and howled in an atypical manner, more akin to black metal or hardcore, than the usual death growl of most doom metal.
The guitar, bass, synth, drums and vocals all bounce and shimmer off of each other, making the album sound truly alive, as opposed to just playing music. The field recordings help a great deal in creating this atmosphere as well; birds chirping, water cascading and wind rumbling. These sounds all help in making this album incredibly enveloping. There are a few shorter tracks interspersed within the album, which incorporate a plucked harp and these tracks have a distinctly Celtic folk inspired sound to them. This really compliments the drone and dirge of the longer, more metal tracks. All in all, this album is very thought-out and impeccably well-performed.
This is funeral doom for people who normally cannot stand the genre. Celestiial really breathe life into a stagnant and at times, boring genre. Do yourself a favor and pick this album up as soon as possible! 8.5/10
rockfreaks.net
Ahhh, miserable rain-sodden tortuous funeral doom played at tectonic speeds...who doesn't love it? Minnesotans Celestiial, another Bindrune Recordings artist, are here with their second full length "Where Life Springs Eternal", an interesting choice of title either with some deep meaning I am unaware of or a healthy dose of humour given the prosaic and lifeless nature of it's recording. The funeral doom world isn't renowned for it's humourous side so I'd imagine it's the former of those two options.
I always find the rating of such funereal albums difficult given the stylistic limitations inherent in the fostering of a sound so reliant on atmosphere against the more common speed of the composition, which for the majority of "Where..." finds itself barely pushing double digit beats per minute. The rainy bleak introduction "Spell Over Still Water" slowly leads you the listener in without really doing much in it's 4 minutes before it is time to approach the gargantuan "Great Storms Carry My Sadness"; at 30 minutes long and a mixture of classic funereal procession and pained screamed lyrics interspersed with spacey synth, the lush sound of running water and even bird noise, it is one hell of a mindfuck. The sound is typical of a Thergothon-inspired funeral doom album, that being as black and desolate as is possible on planet Earth, with snare hits echoing off into the sounds of the netherworld and guitars high on reverb and delay, and in the construction of the songs too Celestiial are pretty formulaic. With two long songs on the record being surrounded by three shorter ones it is these that lead the descent into nothingness, changing little and travelling even less in the vast expanses of time that they eat up.
The theme of water is carried throughout the album, utilised in the pretty piano and acoustic guitar instrumental "From Elm Blossoms A Rose" until it swiftly clears to be replaced by the distant guitar tones of 16-minute "Offering In Cedar Smoke". Given the static nature of "Where Life Springs Eternal"'s main pieces it is left to the atmosphere being generated to lift the album above the pack, and thankfully for Celestiial this is their trump card. The vastness of their sounds, achieved primarily through the drum production and clever usage of guitar tones and feedback, rather than the easy get-out clause of heavy synth, is compelling as it sucks you into it's void generating feelings of total lifelessness and desolation in a post-apocalyptic human-free environment. While very much funeral doom in nature, this sound is reminiscent of black metallers Blut Aus Nord in it's colossally abstract and impenetrable feel and is the key ingredient to making "Where Life Springs Eternal" the good album that it is.
Though unlikely to achieve much adoration in the closeted and sparse world of funeral doom metal, Celestiial have at least provided an album certifiably better than the norm and a template which could be improved upon by them in the future with the mastery of atmosphere that has been displayed here.
metalreview.com (Jordan Campbell)
'Tis a bit daunting, this attempted dissection of something so subtly evocative. One would be foolish, however, to delve into such waters without expecting a challenge.
On Where Life Springs Eternal, Celestiial indeed presents some challenging material, and atypically so. While consistently described as funeral doom, this Minnesota-based entity largely eschews the smothering heaviness that subgenre is known for. Sure, the mammoth compositions and requisite glacial pace are soundly intact, but the shimmering hypnosis and anguished howls found on this album weave a cloak of black earth ambiance. This is sparse, sprawling stuff. As such, it's equally apt to either capture your attention or simply bleed into the background; the choice is yours.
Thus, on one hand, Where Life Springs Eternal can be deemed a success. It truly mirrors the nature with which it is intrinsically tied. Running waters, crackling branches, the hum of life's ebb and flow: this is what Celestiial conveys, and quite well. But nature is what you make of it--the value is in the eyes, ears, and hands of the beholder. If meditatively deconstructing your ego alongside a stream at dusk--for fifty-six minutes--doesn't sound appealing, you may want to look elsewhere.
While divided into five tracks, three--"Spell Over Still Water," "From Elm Blossoms A Rose," and "Songbirds Depart Through the Passing Near the Garden"--serve merely as brackets (beautiful ones, at that) for the droning marathons that comprise the bulk of the record. "Great Storms Carry My Sadness" conveys exactly the vibe the title alludes to; it's a rolling, hypnotic swell that easily bleeds past the half-hour mark. Main cog TR Anderson's distant, unintelligible wails pierce the steady boil, lending a cogency to a slowly-evolving composition that alludes to mimimalist improvisation.
"Offering in Cedar Smoke" is a bit fuller and concise, clocking in at a mere sixteen minutes. Deliberate rhythms and barely-contained rivers of reverb make this a bit more engaging, but nothing on the album truly grasps you by the throat and pulls you under. Rather, these compositions simply exist, outright refusing to dictate the experience. One could percieve this as a critical flaw--citing the notion that profound music should have palpable, tangible impact--and such a claim would have unquestionable merit if we were speaking in a different context. However, Where Life Springs Eternal accomplishes exactly what it wants to, but it also demands a commitment that few are willing to give. After all, some can only handle the wonders of nature in small doses...but that still doesn't diminish their gravity.
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com
Tanner Reed Anderson, Timothy Glenn, and Jason Walton (of Agalloch fame) return for their 2nd full length outing on Bindrune Recordings, and being partial to the great debut Desolate North, I had extremely high expectations going into this effort. Perhaps the stars are not perfectly aligned, or the value of its charms have simply yet to fully sink into my skull, because where I found a near complete rapture on the split with Blood of the Black Owl or the debut, I occasionally felt tedium during several of the 56 minutes of Where Life Springs Eternal. It's a good listen, and given the chance, it should immerse you almost as hopelessly as its predecessor, but the two often feel like day and night. And it's always a little easier to concentrate in the dark.
Now, Celestiial are not your average band playing doom or 'funeral doom' music, though some might argue that the spacious phrasing over the slowly crashing drums here is just as monotonous. No, this band is very true to their original, natural vision, to explore the vast and beautiful countryside of the United States through sonic improvisations. Desolate North was an excursion into both the minimal and gentle plucking of the guitar and the more dense, cerebral, violent compositions, and Where Life Springs Eternal is not the fruit of an entirely separate tree. The tracks presented here are diverse and improvisational, but more like a brazen, naked man parading about the places in the Land yet uncorrupted by civilization, spreading his arms wide and howling at the waterfalls of the cover image, his voice joining with the loud music of the atmosphere. It's simply not as creepy, even when it tries to be.
"Spell Over Still Water" is loaded with cascades of rushing rapid samples, feedback and noise, kind of like Nadja but with less of an intent to create harmonic abstraction. It attempts nothing. It simply is. "Great Storms Carry My Sadness" is perhaps the most depressing piece on the album, with waves of guitar and reverb that carry themselves across canyons and skies, Tanner's voice completely tortured like the Earth itself where it is marred and razed by the progress of mankind. It's also 30 fucking minutes long...so you'll have plenty of time to think about it. "From Elm Blossoms a Rose" feels a lot more purposefully arranged, as samples of water complement a gently lulling piano, but "Offering in Cedar Smoke" is another lengthy number which returns to the band's gripping emotional turmoil, Tanner's black rasp haunting over the swells of guitar volume knobs, crawling cymbals and flutter of birds. "Songbirds Depart Through the Passing Near the Garden" is a short, somber closure to the album, moodily struck pianos and acoustics that send warmth down your spine as you settle yourself in the Earth.
I've got some mixed feelings about this sophomore effort, though ultimately the positives outweigh the moments of repetitious ennui that arrive through the longer compositions (or 'non-compositions'). Granted, those moments are likely intentional, and a band like Celestiial is not something you listen to if you're expecting riffs, melodies, or anything even bordering on traditional metal. This is the sound of the spaces between the music, as if you could pause time and meditate through each natural high and low. Desolate North was a lot darker than this, with shorter songs, and I believe I still prefer that side of Celestiial, which fucked me up but good. That's not to say Where Life Springs Eternal is all bells and whistles. It's hardly an uplifting experience, but the album title alone dictates that it's heart must center about some faint trace of hope.
At any rate, Celestiial do maintain their rare ability to create a sonic response to their environment, and this is one of the few 'nature' oriented bands that amounts to more than a busload of hippies that are as full of shit as they are full of marijuana and other medications. Where Life Springs Eternal may not be the most essential of listening, but it is still quite intriguing, and the next time you get an urge to listen to one of your soccer mom 'ambient sounds of the ' CDs that you picked up at the Discovery Store, I'd recommend that you try Celestiial instead. You may just not be the same again.
www.metalarmyamerica.com (Brian Krasman)
While technically dubbed funeral doom, Minnesota’s CELESTIIAL are a world different than, say, MOURNFUL CONGREGATION. Death doesn’t exactly feel like it’s in the air on Where Life Springs Eternal, the second full-length from this Tanner Anderson-dreamed project. The music’s more in line with LURKER OF CHALLICE meets ARCKANUM, if the latter’s blackness was stretched out over a really, really long path. Acoustic ramblings, water babbling, birds calling from overhead.
Where CELESTIIAL adhere to the sub-genre is with their glacially paced, extraordinarily long passages. Like, hey, got a half hour to kill? Try out “Great Storms Carry My Sadness,” which clocks in just over 30 minutes. That’s a lot to ask for some listeners, especially those just cutting their teeth on this style, and much of what you’ll hear just on this cut sounds more like a walk in the woods occasionally interrupted by a hulking, drenching thunderstorm. It’s pretty refreshing, actually, and makes the time fly by. “Offering in Cedar Smoke” is half the length of the aforementioned, and it’s a bit more in the shoegaze frame of mind.
Most interesting, actually are the contrasts in the other, shorter songs. Opener “Spell Over Still Water” almost sounds like a protest of big industry gnawing its teeth into the forests, as the violent buzzing and feedback sparks practically paint that very picture, whether or not that was intended. Yet, “From Elm Blossoms a Rose” trickles quietly in its ambiance, assuring the listener that in the end, Mother Nature cannot truly be defeated.
It will be interesting to watch this record’s lifespan, as well as CELESTIIAL’s following. With more thought geared toward the environment (and just as many denying any natural decay), this could be the right time for Anderson to find some like-minded followers as equally moved by the forests as he.
www.judaskissmagazine.co.uk (Simon Collins)
Where Life Springs Eternal is the third release from the Minnesota-based funeral doom band Celestiial, last heard from in 2008 with their split vinyl release shared with Blood Of The Black Owl. Celestiial was originally the solo project of Tanner Reed Anderson, but for this album, the band has expanded to a trio, with the addition of Timothy Glenn on drums and Jason Walton (also of Nothing, Subterranean Masquerade and Agalloch) on bass, leaving Tanner Anderson still in charge of vocals and guitars, as well as harp and bowed cymbals.
Where Life Springs Eternal – now there’s a title that doesn’t exactly convey the normal morbid death-instinct obsessions of doom metal. But of course, Celestiial’s music is steeped in mystical reverence for nature, and it encompasses both life and death, inextricably intertwined in the constant dying and becoming of the natural world. In this sense, they’re an archetypal Bindrune Recordings band – the Bindrune website bears the motto ‘Woodland Denizens Unite!’
The bulk of the album’s 56-minute duration is taken up with just two tracks, the 30-minute ‘Great Storms Carry My Sadness’ and the 16-minute ‘Offering in Cedar Smoke’, which are interleaved between three much shorter tracks functioning as an intro, interlude and outro. ‘Spell Over Still Water’ opens with a clamorous, atonal cacophony of Sunn O)))-style diffuse, downtuned guitar grind laced with grating squalls of feedback and sharp stings of bowed cymbal. Having seen how water in a singing bowl seems to seethe and boil as the bowl is vibrated, I imagine that any still water that this track was played over would become pretty agitated. This almost industrial opening section fades away into the soothing sounds of rain, birdsong and distant peals of thunder – field recordings of nature sounds are extensively used on Where Life Springs Eternal, as they were on the split LP with Blood Of The Black Owl.
‘Great Storms Carry My Sadness’ cleaves more closely to expected funeral doom norms, its solemn, crawling pace punctuated by cymbal smashes and shrieked vocals over warm, smooth (possibly e-bowed) guitar and bass harmonics filtered through gauzy veils of reverb. In quieter passages, the sound of rapidly running water provided a constant background hiss (the album cover has a photo of a waterfall, and the booklet is full of temperate rainforest images). There’s an entranced, intensely introspective feel to the track, simultaneously dejected and blissful, though it’s likely to try the patience of listeners of a less meditative turn of mind, and there’s little development or change throughout the track’s half-hour duration, just the mantric repetition of swelling, grandiose chords, eventually washed away by the rising sound of running water.
The album’s other long track, ‘Offering in Cedar Smoke’ is, if anything, even more tranced-out than ‘Great Storms Carry My Sadness’, a purring bass hum and a cavernous, monotonous beat providing the foundation for doleful, shoegazy washes of guitar, blackened vocal shrieks and mournful owl cries, locked into a frozen, stupefied rapture, something like a blend of Agalloch and Alcest.
In between these two sprawling leviathans comes the two-and-a-half-minute ‘From Elm Blossoms a Rose’, a delicately lilting embroidery of plucked harp with a distinctly archaic, Celtic feel recalling neo-folk bands such as Werkraum or Scivias, laid over birdsong and those endless gushing torrents of water. ‘Songbirds Depart Through the Passing Near the Garden’ closes the album with another couple of minutes of a simple plucked harp figure, with a very close, confiding, intimate feel, in stark contrast to the remote, impersonal grandeur of the longer tracks.
Where Life Springs Eternal is absorbing in parts, but the album as a whole does feel overly long and static even by funeral doom standards – I preferred the more various approach adopted on ‘White Depths Dove The Red-Eyed’, Celestiial’s side of the split LP with Blood Of The Black Owl. The harp parts on the third and fifth tracks are really beautiful, but the endless water sounds get a bit wearisome, and one long track rather than two would make the album less of an endurance test.
Absolute Zero: http://azm-magazine.blogspot.com/ (Clint Listing)
This is a very personal release for me as Celestiial mixes some of the best elements in all of Doom and Industrial music for me to make a release that sends shivers down my spine to say the least. If you love Swans, Godflesh and Ancient Wisdom then Where life springs eternal will be a Industrial Doom masterpiece to you. I love the ambient very Dusk (USA) like elements incorperated into the over all release. Bindrune seems to love to mix the Heathen/ Nature based ideal to thier bands. Tanner as added Jason Walton of (Nothing and Agalloch) into the mix by having him play bass and master it. There is a very funeral doom element to this. I love the slow plodding and over all haunting nature of this release very epic sounding as well this band really loves Ancient Wisdom for its Slow Blackened Doom sound. The verb washed over the release really makes it all the more special to listen to. Tanner Anderson with is 2nd full length under the name Celestiial is just a magical and mysterious journey I hope to re live over and over again.
Metalteamuk.net (Pete Woods)
Hailing from Minnesota, Celestiial were originally a one man project from Tanner R. Anderson who released debut album ‘Desolate North’ back in 2006 and have also collaborated on a split recording with label mates Blood Of The Black Owl. Now they have expanded into a trio including bassist Jason Walton, who among others has also been involved in Agalloch and Subterranean Masquerade. Musically it is quickly evident that they are very much inspired by nature as the first track here ‘Spell Over Still Water’ has field recordings of birdsong and (well) water after it has dished out some unsettling acerbic noise.
The water theme can be heard behind the albums central second number ‘Great Storms Carry My Sadness.’ It is there in the background and in a way it is slightly distracting as it sounds like the sort of quiet hiss you used to get listening to stuff on cassette to my ears. At the forefront of the number, which I should hasten to add clocks in at a whopping 30 minutes we have a repetitively slow and mesmerising exercise of funeral doom. This basically concentrates on a slow drum rhythm, occasional howling vocals, again slowly coursing out the speakers and mad droning pulse like guitars and bass. This and the similar 17 minute ‘Offering In Cedar Smoke’ form the backbone of the album. There are moments where you may hear the call of an owl thrown into the mix but I have to say that unless you really have a huge amount of patience you may well find this a pretentious and highly boring experience. I, now on third listen am stuck somewhere on the fence personally, I do partly consider it just so but also find myself drawn to it, perhaps like a moth to a flame. It becomes a bit of a challenge even, and I feel that I must get to the end of the number rather than give into temptation and forward or stop it. The field recordings and slower pulse with the water running heightened in the mix at the mammoth track’s 13 minute mark do actually come as a relief but after a few minutes, a rumble of thunder and a throaty roar, the repetitive strains of the music are back into action to drag you along for the remainder of the ride.
Having been somewhat negative, the positive side of things are perhaps down to the listener’s imagination. I can almost envisage this as being like a primeval origin of the species. The droning slow tumult, creation itself as life of animal and plant come into form, perhaps as some type of musical Darwinism. ‘From Elm Blossoms A Rose’ is a beautiful interlude between the two main tracks. It’s a gorgeous piece of acoustic playing that if anything sounds a bit like a musical box with water running and birds tweeting around it.
So this could be considered a bit of an endurance test but then again it is an interesting one. It also is pretty good background music that you can have on whilst not particularly focusing on it. I would have to be in the right mood to listen to it again and am not entirely sure what that exact mood might be. One thing I will say is do not attempt to listen to with a full bladder, all those watery sounds will get you in the end. Oh Celestiial also shun Internet presence too, so any interest in them is via their record label. |
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