Darsombra is Brian Daniloski who is better known as a member of Meatjack. This solo project is a big step away from the sludgy blasts of metal that Meatjack produce. Ecdysis still showcases huge overdriven guitars but there’s no chugging. Instead Daniloski creates atmospheric drones and riffs and combines them with tape collages of voices and noise.
Ecdysis (which is the periodic shedding of an exoskeleton during the growth of an insect) is a good album but is let down by a couple of problems. One is Daniloski’s patchy use of effects: he uses some effects with mixed results. The pitchshifer on “Thinning the Herd” sounds awful, like someone who has just bought an effects pedal but hasn’t had the time to work on getting a good, original sound out of it. The use of this particular effect disguises what could be much more interesting music. However, there are far more places on the album where the guitar does sound fantastic, the use of Ebow and echo effect on “The Place where there is no Darkness” gives a cavernous vibe to the track.
While there are a couple of very good songs on Ecdysis, overall it is let down by too much meandering. Many of the songs could be shortened without losing any of their impact and the last two tunes did nothing for me at all. This leads to the second problem I had with the album: it seemed that all of the songs followed a similar structure of loop one piece of ambient noise/guitar, play low end riffs, twiddle about on the higher notes and finally adding the odd noise or two. Sometimes it works well, other times it doesn’t and comes across as formulaic.
When it works the result is “My House.” On this song there is a plodding drum machine and indecipherable vocals with a slow, fuzzed out riff in the background. Every now and then a sitar appears to completely shake up the song. The pitchshifter returns on this track but suits the music more here. It's followed by “Drag the Carcass,” which is just as good but a shift in mood. Daniloski loops some bass heavy feedback and plays an almost Eastern sounding set of scales over it. A vocal recording of a preacher fades in. The vocal is chanting in a completely different timing which creates a dizzying effect. As the preacher gets more worked up, Daniloski steps up his guitar playing and the intensity of the piece becomes palpable.
The parts I did like of Ecdysis unfortunately were outnumbered by parts that I found frustrating and tedious to listen to. This is music that I would normally like but something was just lacking.
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