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Welcome to yet another weekly album review podcast episode. If you’ve been following us for a bit, you may recall a lengthy review of Cryo Chamber’s 2019 year-end Lovecraft collaboration, Hastur. In it, I introduced a close friend of mine, Eric, who joined me in a winding conversation about The King in Yellow, Carcosa, and the mystifying timbres permeating its 140-minute run time. He’s well-read on Lovecraft and the wellspring of literature inspired by it. As a result, we thought it’d be fitting to bestow him the moniker of “Lovecraft scholar” and bring him on for reviews of albums that are of a Lovecraftian strain. While this may not necessarily apply to the album of dissection this week (maybe it does, but ever so vaguely), Eric and I have bonded over several hundred hours of late-night driving from Eugene to Portland and back to catch innumerable live shows. And though many of these outings have become fleeting memories, one that continues to persist with utmost clarity is our shared electrifying experience of seeing Napalm Death live for the first time alongside Voivod on their Through Space and Grind tour (2015).
That’s quite the heap of preamble to frame this episode up, but it illustrates, at least in part, the early intrigue both Eric and I took in Shane Embury’s work. His galloping bass lines that trample and plod through Napalm Death’s belters were an early touchstone for developing a deeper kinship with grindcore, particularly in a live setting. And it should come as little surprise, especially if you’ve followed him for a while, that Embury is steeped in a multitude of projects cut from the cloth of extreme metal; however, his latest endeavor is anything but.
Dark Sky Burial is an extension of Embury’s love for gloomy experimental music and SciFi/horror films of yore. His debut, De Omnibus Dubitandum Est, is an assortment of cinematic tones and themes, many of which are electronic and lean into industrial and/or ambient territory. Tranquil passages of shimmering resonances glide by and virulent beats cudgel with retrofuturistic vigor. It’s frankly a bit challenging to capture the vibe of this debut in a succinct manner as it explores a far-reaching spectrum of moods. “Hallowed by thy name” pays homage to 80s synth scores a la John Carpenter and “The Wheel” plays out like an intense chase sequence in a spy-thriller via its tribalistic drumming. There’s a healthy chunk of detail to dissect in this album, and as Embury noted, there is enough material for three to four more Dark Sky Burial records. When those will drop we haven’t a clue, but we’re eagerly anticipating what tonal horizons this project will journey toward next. Thank you so much for tuning in.
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You can acquire a digital copy of De Omnibus Dubitandum Est via Dark Sky Burial’s Bandcamp page. Follow Shane’s project on Facebook and/or Instagram to stay in the loop about new developments as a few more albums are planned.
If you’d like to support us beyond listening to our podcast, you can do so by becoming a patron on our Patreon page. There you can read all of our notes for each album review episode we publish, gain early access to every episode before its official release, and acquire an embroidered From Corners Unknown patch, button, and stickers if that’s your thing. Up next week is a review of Coffin Apartment’s self-titled debut. Thank you to Duncan Park and Matt Braymer-Hayes for supporting us here.
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