band: From Astral Planes album: 2012 promo year: 2012
genres: doom metal, post-metal origin: USA
ENTER THE ASTRAL PLANE
Sometimes one just wakes up in
the middle of the night and wonders oneself why some really worth listening
music just doesn’t get the attention it should receive. Specially in the
circles involving doom metal, being a band followed by a considerable crowd is
more eccentric than being a band known by a couple of human beings, it doesn’t
matter how nice, original and out of this doomed planet is your music. This is the
situation in which From Astral Planes
dwells. This extremely underground band hails from Rochester, New York. I ran
into this project because of its line-up: drummer and frontman of From Astral Planes is Chris Dalcin, the
man behind the now legendary, ultra depressive 90’s band …And Here I Lie. After writing music under the moniker of Elusive Travel (which seems to remain
as an active project), Chris Dalcin is back in the stage with From Astral Planes. The project has not
much time around, they started out last year and, as far as I know, they have
just published a couple of songs and packaged them into this short untitled
promo album which is, actually, limited to 250 copies. These two songs are
entitled “The Chew of Ropes” and “Lazy Pond”.
From Astral Planes is dark, enigmatic and depressive. Not wedded to
down-tempo of doom metal, the sound of this band is far of being foreseeable,
monotonous and monolithic. The band seems to aim to sound mysterious and
fitting with what one expects to hear when realizes about the band’s name. The
guitar work, for example, features clean guitars, nice riffs and solos, claiming
to be the element driving the music. Riffing, drum tempo and some solos show a
clear influence of Katatonia,
perhaps “Tonight’s Decision” era is the most persistent thing that come to my
mind by listening to this couple of songs. Some acoustic passages are featured as
well in beautiful moments of the songs.
Really interesting are the vocals
in this album, a total of three entities haunting the sound of From Astral Planes. They, alongside
with a nice keyboard work, set the atmospheric outlook of the band. The first
vocal style is a clean enigmatic voice, perhaps evoking Canaan’s Mauro; the second and the third one walk together by the
hand during the most extreme passages, they are quite deep growls and harsh
black-metalish screams. Actually, some may think that they sound way too brutal
for the approach of the music, in the beginning I thought so. Nevertheless,
this is one of the things that make the band so interesting. This unique blend
of vocals performs elegant and puzzling lyrics. Both songs, share this feeling,
but I find “The Chew of Ropes” the most doomed one, it actually features the
slowest moment in the album.
From Astral Planes is not afraid of looking back to the past in …And Here I Lie, there are some ties in
the sound of both bands, fans of …And
Here I Lie will certainly enjoy this one. This album shows a well worked
and structured music. I hope the project continues and we can listen to more of
them in the short future…
Reverb Nation
