A Storm Of Light - Nations To Flames (Album Review)
Tuesday, 01 October 2013
Written by Ben Bland
Josh Graham’s A Storm Of Light project will always remain in the shadow of Neurosis, the band with whom he collaborated on visuals for over a decade until the release of their ‘Honor Found In Decay’ album last year. But if any record in the Storm of Light discography is going to allow Graham and company (drummer Billy Graves and bassist Domenic Seita) to escape the Neurosis shadow, then it’s ‘Nations To Flames’.
In a way, this is an album that operates in the opposite manner to the sludge pioneers, who have become more expansive and experimental in sound over the years. Graham credits playing with Slayer at All Tomorrow’s Parties last year with inspiring A Storm Of Light’s faster direction on ‘Nations To Flames’ and it’s primal music, with a crust bent to the sound that dispenses with the more widescreen post-rock influences that came to the fore on predecessor ‘As the Valley of Death Become Us, Our Silver Memories Fade’.
Fall starts the album as it means to go on. There’s still plenty of droning feedback and sludge guitar tones, but Graves and Seita sound like they’re playing on steroids compared to before.
It’s recognisably the same band, especially with Graham’s feral vocals in such fine order, but this time lacking in patience and determined to get on with things. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is unclear. ‘As the Valley of Death...’ was arguably A Storm Of Light’s finest effort to date, demonstrating a deftness of touch that wasn’t to be found on the group’s early recordings.
‘Nations To Flames’ dispenses with that to an extent in favour of a more direct line of argument. Tracks like The Fire Sermon and You Are The Hunted benefit enormously, with the trio proving that they can play like a heavier and more demented ‘Blood Mountain’-era Mastodon when the mood suits them. Other tracks, like Omen and Lifeless, end up sounding a bit, well, lifeless.
The fact that some tracks fail where others do not is less a suggestion that A Storm Of Light are incapable of keeping up a high level of quality songwriting, and more that an entire record full of their new style is a little underwhelming.
It would’ve been interesting to see the band attempt to craft an album that mixed their more progressive direction of yore with their current desire to go for the throat. What we’re left with instead is a great breakneck sludge record, but one that’s not quite as effective as it should be.
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