Six Organs of Admittance occupy a musical layer between our world and one hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years ago. Their deeply layered and folk-tinged records all warp the listener’s perception of traditional music. Invariably using simple instruments, they channel the music through another layer of complexity that in equal measures strips the music back and yet embellishes it in waves of noise and feedback.

Shelter From The Ash is their third album in as many years. It’s not as intergalactic as Sun Awakens, or as outright beautiful as School of the Flower. It finds Ben Chasny somewhere in the middle, neither looking forward nor looking back. It feels like a stop-gap record. There’s nothing as ambitious on this record as the previous two, it feels like he’s almost gone back to basics. It features rarely more than an acoustic guitar and an electric guitar, duelling for your attention and, ultimately, supremacy on the album. There’s also a few duets too. Male and female vocals chant and whisper under the weight of the music, not quite strong enough to dominate proceedings.

It’s only really on the centre piece of the album, “Coming To Get You” do we get a full realisation of the SOoA sound. Some epic, widescreen music of feedback drenched guitars that slowly revolve and pick their way through an increasing wall of sound. Drums batter and thrash around the fuzz of guitars, aggressive, sinister and brooding. Other than that, the music is rarely exciting and it passes over you as if you were in some dream. Shelter From The Ash feels an appropriate title, the entire album feels as though it’s shimmering in a heat haze but its never able to break free from its dirty and brazen roots. Like a mirage on the horizon, it promises much but, once you get there, its just a disappointment. After the great records from SOoA in recent times, it feels doubly disappointing that this record is treading water rather than making the waves we know they’re capable of.
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Links
Six Organs of Admittance [official site] [myspace] [buy it]