Album Review: Barrowlands – Tides
Band: Barrowlands
Album: Tides
Label: Independent
Release: July 12th, 2024
Country: USA
Format reviewed: High quality digital recording
Album Review: Barrowlands – Tides by Ask
With its slow pace and rise and fall of intensity, the title is well found. Listening to Tides, the third offering from American band Barrowlands, feels like getting lost in barren mountain lands, but it never gets frightening or dark. All the way there is a sense of safety, of being held in this vast maze of undergrowth and untended paths. I don’t know where the safe feeling comes from. Tides is full of rough edges and unexpected turns. Still, there is a warmth, a sense of care and maybe also a feeling of aloofness, as if the artists are too distracted by their own fantasies to focus on scaring their audience.
The production is minimalistic and deeply textured. Instruments are given long solo passages where they get to shine in their full capacity. Silence an air between notes give room to feel and think. A sense of aimless wandering, stumbling over unexpected streams and puddles as the album goes on.
The guitar and drums form the basic sound, a vast world rising and falling from slow and moderately intense black metal to jazzy rhythms and classical interludes. A bowed instrument is played in a straight forward and rather coarse style, simple melodies answering the soft curls of the guitar, bringing a feeling of tension and adventure to the soundscape. The guitars break out in long solos, sometimes a jazzy excursion right before a metal outburst. The base is clearly audible and is given room to play solo which gives a feeling of earthiness and deapth. Under all of the experimentation the drums are a steady presence, mostly supportive but sometimes breaking out in their own solo escapades.
When I listen, I enter into a strange state of mind. I tend to lose focus; my analytic mind gets lost in all the turns and experiments. Following paths that lead nowhere, forgetting where I was heading, forgetting why I even started this circlewalk, forgetting why I needed to get back. In all of it the vocalist is present; not as a human companion, but rather as wind and spirit, breathing and screaming, sometimes bringing chills to my spine.
What is the purpose of Tides? What are the artists thinking when they embark on this journey together, with no goal? Does it matter? The more I listen the more I appreciate being in the world of Barrowlands. After several spins, Tides is still new. I still get lost, find things I am sure were not there the last time. It is a slow meditation in untamed but benevolent nature. Tides requires time and the right kind of mindset. Even though it draws the listener in at the first minute, it is not an album for quick and easy listening. A surface level listening, as background or quick gratification, the real beauty of Tides gets lost – the textures, the details, the unexpected harmonies, the change of style, tempo or instrumentation just when you thought you know where the road is heading. Just like the paths in the mountains, trampled by deers, seem to lead nowhere, they will be annoying and misleading for a wanderer in hurry. But for an audience with the day off and the open mind to take it all in, those paths might lead just to where you need to be. 9/10
9/10 Epic Storm
**Please support the underground! It’s vital to the future of our genre**
#WeAreBlessedAltarZine
#TheZineSupportingTheUnderground
