Blood of the Black Owl

Blood of the Black Owl's appropriately titled third release is a deeply disturbing journey into the world of the ambient and experimental. Many passages aren't exactly the kind of thing one could easily call "beautiful" ― most of it is unpleasantly unsettling ― yet it's engaging, clever and extremely well executed. An undulating ambience, with swells of percussion, flutes, terrifying chants/whispers, sound effects, rhythms and general noise, forms the first track, and at over 13 minutes, it's intensely draining. In the following four movements, we find further distorted voices, ambience and miscellaneous instruments, but we are also met with the occasional standard drums, electric guitar and bass, which the listener might feel compelled to cling onto. In comparison to the wild, alien territories of the other sounds this normalcy is strangely comforting. Aside from it not being an album one can listen to very often, it is a remarkable, emotional, petrifying, isolating and penetrating soundscape.