U.S. Christmas

USX's The Valley Path is an album characterized by its textural layers and vivid sonic landscapes, which marry the melodic eloquence of post-rock and the visceral tonality of doom metal. Composed as a single 40-minute track, arranged into three movements, the album is immersive in its surreal melancholy and introspection, invoking a somber sense of solitude with glimpses of optimism. It accomplishes this with the hypnotic repetition of simple melodies, progressing and building in crescendos with the seamless transitions and additions of a diversity of different tonal sources. USX display their defining talents by means of their unending creative and versatile sonic textures, including innovative guitar manipulations, feedback drones, electric organs, melodic strings, sparse, ghostly vocals and more. The interludes between movements are laden with moments of ominous silence and transitions into the sonic atmosphere of the nighttime ambience of distant trains, crickets and howls of nature. USX essentially present an album that's characteristically more post-rock than metal, but offers a refreshing change to listeners from both ends of the spectrum.