Dark Ambient Album: Hell Isn't Physical, It's Digital!

A few months ago, ambient artist Scott Lawlor kindly asked if I fancied collaborating with him on a dark ambient album. Hell Isn't Physical, It's Digital! is the result, an ominous album full of looming threat and dark impulses. The album description:

"A depressed programmer, the Internet, and the whims of Chance ignite a spark of dark genius that would be better left unlit. 

A new way of seeing reality is birthed, the sticky tendrils of corruption and sin eschewing the physical and instead, embracing the ones and zeroes that flood our world. 

A brooding and sinister dark ambient collaboration from the minds of Reality Scruncher and Scott Lawlor, an album that shows where you must not tread, and then forces you to go there regardless."

You can find it on Bandcamp and it is currently set to Name Your Price.

Dark Ambient Review: Turn Around and You're Dead in Your Dreams

Review By Casey Douglass

Cover Art

Whenever I review a dark ambient album, there is a very high chance that I will note something down as an “ahh vocal”. Scott Lawlor’s album Turn Around and You're Dead in Your Dreams is probably the first album that I’ve reviewed in which those two words might easily describe the dominant aesthetic of each track. There is more to it of course, but in the broadest of strokes, the description feels right.

Each track features a mixture of male and female “ahh” vocals, sometimes one is more dominant, at other times, they pulse and seem to float in the soundscape, nestling amongst smoothly sweeping electronic tones, metallic resonances, chiming notes and echoes. There are also small detail sounds, such as what seems to be a wet crackling, buzzings, or even such things as bat-like chittering and insidious whispering.

Into The Dark Portal is one of my favourite tracks. The male and female “ahhs” sit alongside wispy sparkles and a low drone. At certain moments, the low tones seem to threaten to smother or drown the vocals, the audio equivalent to the atmosphere of a room thickening. This track, to me, had the feeling of a joss-stick silently smoking in a gloomy space. It had the feeling of a summoning, yet also a little later, of a hive.

The next track, The Dreams That Foreshadow Death, is another that gave me some fun mental imagery. The ever-present vocals are joined by a roaming buzz and a gnat-like high-pitched tone that comes and goes. The female vocal feels like it is sitting above the background of the soundscape too. What this track brought to mind were the scenes in The Matrix where Morpheus reveals the state of things to Neo by way of an antique television set. Scott’s track felt like this, like an old TV showing swirls of static or other imagery, with crystalline sweeps and at one point, a kind of hollow laughter in the buzzes.

The last track, The Final Manifestation of The Unconscious Mind, is another favourite for me. This one opens with the bat-like chittering that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. The opening female vocal noticeably incorporates a few more nuances than a simple “ahh”. The male vocal also seems to have transformed into a sighing “ahhing” whisper. This track felt like it sat in a large vertical space to me, maybe inspired by Scott’s choice of cover artwork. The female vocal seems to dance high in the roof while the listener is in a murky dark place, surrounded by bats and gruff whispers. In my opinion, a fine depiction of what someone’s unconscious mind might contain as they look higher to a land that they can’t seem to reach.

In Turn Around and You're Dead in Your Dreams, Scott has created a dark ambient album that contains a sweeping, heaven-touching majesty, but one which leaves plenty of room for the darker denizens of the mind to roam. In a world in which grey areas are an endangered species, a world in which almost everyone is seeking the purity of being right or good, I enjoyed how this album felt like it embodied how things can feel when you’re willing to accept that life isn’t as neat as you’d like it to be.

Visit the Turn Around and You're Dead in Your Dreams page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Turn Around and You're Dead in Your Dreams

Album Artist: Scott Lawlor

Released: 28 Jan 2022

Dark Ambient Review: Journey of a Dying Girl

Review By Casey Douglass

Album Cover

Death, or brushes with death, are probably the ultimate contact with reality. They offer a fresh perspective on how you view yourself and the world, and cut through so much of the fluff of life. Scott Lawlor’s Journey of a Dying Girl is a dark ambient album themed around one such experience: an attack, a floating between worlds, and a person returning to life utterly changed by the event.

Journey of a Dying Girl achieves the depiction of its theme by creating soundscapes infused with duality. The light tones and vocals nestle on a sea of low drones and rumblings, and this creates a feeling of the ethereal and the mundane brushing up against each other. There are piano and string notes, and a pleasing hint of the breeze that for me, firmly cemented the soundscapes as happening outside. These are tracks that flow and ebb as they play, each swell and fall of tone carrying the listener along.

My favourite track was Covered in Darkness. It opens with a low pulsing and a high distant whistling tone. A gentle drone sits in the background, a perpetual “ahhhh” populated with small chiming notes. As the track intensifies, there is a whistle like a metal kettle coming to the boil, a pleasing shimmering, and later, crackling, shuffling movements, along with what sounds like dripping leaves. This track made me think of a person walking through a black fog during the day time, tiny glinting pixie lights flaring and sputtering in the thick air particles around them.

Exit this Dimension is another track that I really enjoyed. It starts with a climbing and echoey female vocal sitting in a droning, breath-like space. The drone grows and a pulsing ringing tone emerges. Some time around the midpoint, the female vocal begins to create the impression of falling, with what I thought were the hisses of whispering at the fringes. Like Covered in Darkness, this felt like one of the darker tracks on the album, a meeting of one world with another.

Finally, the last track, In the Middle of a Garden, You Will See a Rose, is a great track for the album to end with. The album description describes the dying girl as coming back to life, and this track seems a great accompaniment to that. It begins with echoing piano notes and an insect-like buzz. There are the sounds of wind and leaves, with smooth high tones joining piano notes. There are bird-call-like electronic tones that seem to fall, a gentle drone and a pulsing feeling. This is a gentle track to end the album with, its darker tones and mood merging with a feeling of overcoming something, even if the act of overcoming has a high price.

Journey of a Dying Girl is the sound of a peaceful dalliance between the worlds of the living and the dying. While many dark ambient albums achieve their darker elements by more explicit means, this album creates a more subtle, smooth, depiction of the dark. It’s a chill and relaxing listen, and one that I believe is well worth your time to check out.

Visit the Journey of a Dying Girl page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Journey of a Dying Girl

Album Artist: Scott Lawlor

Released: 16 July 2021

Dark Ambient Review: Behind the Veil of Black Stars

Review By Casey Douglass

Album cover

In my recent interview with Scott Lawlor, we touched on the topic of ambientonline.org’s One Sample Dare Challenges, contests in which the composers must use only one sample to create their musical piece. Scott recently released Behind the Veil of Black Stars, a slice of dark space ambient that was created for one of these challenges. The album consists of three, twenty to thirty minute tracks, each of which conjures up the bleak indifference of space in its own way. My favourite track is No Place To Land, and one of the main notes I wrote about it was “Recipe for agitation?” You'll see why.

No Place To Land begins with a low, gradual sound, a little like wind blowing along a plastic tunnel. It winds upwards and begins to rasp with a sharpness to its edge not long after. A shrill sound emerges, which to me, seemed like a flock of jackdaws settling for the night. The track starts to feel as if it has a mechanical underpinning not long after this, which I think is confirmed by the siren-like sound that comes after.

The siren tone arrives at about the three minute mark, and it feels like it agitates the soundscape. It also cements the impression that the rest of the track gave me, which was of a spaceship trying to land on a barren planet, but each time that it gets near to the ground, it spies some reason as to why it shouldn’t land. The track lifts and falls, rises and descends, over and over. You feel like you can hear engines winding down and surging upwards with each failed attempt, and that very much sets the scene for the remainder of the track.

I liked the uneasiness that No Place To Land seemed to bring about in my mind. It wasn’t too harsh or uncomfortable, but as someone who knows how his brain feels when his OCD has tripped him up with rumination and anxiety, No Place To Land approximates this unsettled feeling, but in a much more mellow way. It’s like a dark, space-based Groundhog Day, but with subtle changes as it plays out.

There is much to enjoy in the other tracks too. Behind The Veil of Stars is a track that seems to shimmer and boil with static, drone and an ominous feeling of vast depth and distance. Unquiet Spirits Wandering a Dying Planet flicks bubbling tones and electronic warbles from ear to ear in the first half, yet settles into a deeper, “plane flying over your head” droning space for the second half, which I must admit I preferred. They are both great tracks.

It’s amazing to think that Behind the Veil of Black Stars was made with only one sample at its core, and yet Scott has twisted and manipulated it into a dark sci-fi creation, one that thrums with the cold of space and the threat of an indifferent universe.

Visit the Behind the Veil of Black Stars page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Behind the Veil of Black Stars

Album Artist: Scott Lawlor

Released: 10 April 2021

Dark Ambient Interview: Scott Lawlor

Anyone who knows Scott Lawlor will be all too aware of how prolific he is with his music releases. It’s a good thing that his music is well worth listening to! Scott kindly agreed to share a few words with me in this interview. We touch on how he can be so prolific, the challenges of composing music as a blind person, the virtue of creative constraint versus total freedom, and the most mundane sound he feels that he has ever recorded. Thanks for joining us and I hope you enjoy the interview.

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Casey: Scott, even though I am familiar with how prolific you are with your music releases, it still surprises me just how frequently I see that you’ve released a new album on Bandcamp. What are the main factors in your life, that you think may contribute to how you can achieve such a release rate, how does this current rate compare with periods earlier in your musical life, where you felt the need to take a break from things, and what was different between the two periods?

Scott: I am a stay-at-home dad and since my kids are in school, I have a lot of time to compose and release music. Some years have been busier than others regarding actual number of releases but through all of that time, my situation has been the same.

I've got many more albums on our network that I've recorded over the last 7 years, so if I quit writing new music right now, I'd still have releases for a long time to come. I'm always working on new music so the odds of catching up to myself are astronomically impossible at this point.

Casey: As a blind composer, I know that you occasionally tweet about accessibility issues with the tools or apps that you want to use. What kinds of accessibility issue do you find the most irritating, which apps or tools do you use that you feel handle things really well, and more broadly, what is your usual process for composing a new track, which tools do you tend to use the most etc.?

Scott: Well, for a long time, I had a Roland fa08, Sound Forge and Audacity as my main way of composing music and though this set of tools allowed me to create many albums over the 6 years that I used them, they weren't as accessible as the current tools I utilize.

The menus on the Roland didn't talk and I was limited in how I could shape sound from within the synth, so this lead me to using things like Audacity for shaping recorded sound from the Roland into something totally different. Even though it was an interesting experience to do things this way and I got quite proficient after developing such a streamlined workflow, the results from one project to another weren't as different sonically as I thought they'd be.

As an example, Paul Stretch is a tool that I used to use quite a lot in my early work and though it can create some interesting results, if you change the default values, it's something I hardly ever use anymore, or, if I do use it, it's part of something with a good many more layers and elements mixed in.

I think part of the reason PS has such a bad rap in the ambient community is probably because people didn't change the values, and just released things that were run through it with no further processing after the fact. Just look at all the videos of popular songs that were run through this plugin and uploaded to YouTube as an example.

The same can be said for other effects inside the box and so the point of all this is to say that, though for me, this method worked for a while, it's actually pretty easy to tell which effects I used, particularly on the noise projects that I've done over the years.

Now that I've said all that, the tools that I use now are totally different and they're accessible with speech so it's much easier to manipulate sound and add interesting effects where this wasn't possible before. I use Komplete Kontrol from Native Instruments, and various third party instruments by companies like Soundiron, Soniccouture, Luftrum, Sudden Audio and, of course other things from Native Instruments themselves.

The most time consuming part of composing now is deciding on which sound to use. Sometimes it takes me longer to find the sound I want than it does to create the actual work in question.

Casey: In an interview with the From Corners Unknown podcast, you touched on the topic of how constraints can often aid creativity, talking about how contests like the ambientonline.org forum’s One Sample Dare Challenge can give creating a different focus and challenge you in different ways. How much constraint do you enjoy before you feel it becomes a true hindrance, how often might you sit and compose with no purpose in mind, and the theme later suggests itself, and do you prefer one approach over the other?

Scott: Most of the time, I compose without constraint, just letting the improvisation go where it will as I play on the keyboard and upon playback over time, a theme or concept will come to me for the music. I do prefer this approach but am thinking of revisiting the ambientonline.org One Sample Dare challenges since I have new effects, software and hardware that are much more accessible.

Casey: In the aforementioned From Corners Unknown interview, you talked about some of the sounds that you recorded, including workmen breaking your house windows, at the time that it was your turn to submit the sample for the One Sample Dare Challenge. I was wondering, what is the strangest or most obscure sound that you can ever remember sampling, and which mundane thing have you recorded, that gave you the most surprising and satisfying sound, once you started experimenting with it?

Scott: The most mundane thing I've ever recorded was the spin cycle of my old washing machine and I took that recording and created an album called Spin Drone, which, looking back, isn't really that interesting but some people really seem to love that album.

I think the most interesting thing I recorded was different objects in our old clothes dryer which I then used for an album called the Ambient Series 1, Symphony for Prepared Dryer. I put many different things in the dryer including silverware, wooden alphabet blocks, shoes, coins, and even sweet potatoes, recorded from 19 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on the item and then processed those sounds to create the album.

My wife wouldn't allow me to put her pipe wrench or glass in the appliance and you can hear her promptly rejecting both ideas in the last track of the album which is the documentary for the project.

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Thanks very much to Scott for answering my questions. If you’d like to find Scott’s music, you can find him on Bandcamp at this link.

Dark Ambient Review: S.S. Moreau

Review by Casey Douglass

I’ve never read the book, or seen the films inspired by H.G Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau, but I guess that the fact I know the general gist of it speaks to its pervasiveness in parts of our culture. While I remember watching a Simpsons’ Halloween special that tipped its hat to the tale, I’m not aware of having heard any music that was inspired by its species-meddling. That is, until now, as S.S Moreau is a dark ambient album from Scott Lawlor and Mombi Yuleman, one that takes the sinister idea of Dr Moreau and runs with it... all the way into space!

I quite like coming across stories or ideas that uproot something from its familiar setting, and that plants it somewhere quite different. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but others, it can take something that you previously felt quite indifferent to, and give it enough of a twist to make you realise that you really enjoy it in this form. The concept of S.S Moreau is that of a stranded spaceship crew who are rescued by the sinister doctor when his space station, the S.S Moreau, detects their distress beacon. Once “rescued”, and after a period of uneasy discovery, the crew eventually find themselves fleeing from his strange alien-hybrid creatures as they threaten to overrun the station.

I thought that the first track, The Biological Station, set this up beautifully. It opens with an eerie whistling drone, a little like what you might hear in the first Alien film’s score. A light beeping and a whirring tone looms, and what began as restful, grows into a more ominous soundscape. It starts to feel a bit swarm-like, and as if something big is coming. It is the audio equivalent of being on the verge of starvation and coming across a maggot ridden cow carcass. Salvation and doom all in one. A little later, the sounds and tones gave me the feeling of the stranded ship being swallowed up by the larger S.S Moreau, the creaking metal and cavernous feelings giving the impression that the larger ship actually licked its lips. Then you hear the organic, guttural sounds of strange creatures.

The tracks that follow feature a nice range of creature sounds. Some sound bird-like or monkey-like, others more alien. He Knows Something Of Science feels damn right tropical, with clicking trickling water, insect-like rattling and the hoots and chirps of who knows what. Monsters Manufactured is a different beast, one that feels more lab-like, more meddling. It opens with a deep male chant, a female one joins, and a third that warps up and seems alien... something other. An ominous beat and a tinny beeping rhythm create an enjoyable feeling of “wrongness”. It lightens a little later, with a female vocal and light, breezy tones, but the background sounds still hint at dark things. I thought that I heard faltering footsteps on metal floors at one point, and at another, a kind of trundling rising discord, like a mass breakout of warrior insects.

How The Beast Folk Tasted Blood is a clinking, smooth space, the slow beat soon joined by faster tempos. It felt a little tribal, a little “cannibal”, a little “exotic”. I liked the last third or so the most though, when things seem to darken, a sound like sea waves breaking on a beach of bones and a vibrating tone hinting at a line crossed that can’t be undone. The final track, No Desire To Return To Mankind, seems to give the protagonist a dark dose of grim determination. Its plastic-carrier-bag-rustling and throbbing bass tones giving it a “film end-credit” type feeling, one where the ending was far from happy and the scars and trauma will last in the survivor/s for the rest of their life. I particularly enjoyed the radio-chatter and the strange squawks and sounds that seep into things.

S.S Moreau is a dark ambient space treat for people who like their darkness with a sci-fi twist. Some of the sounds it contains seem close to their earthly counterparts, others seem warped and manipulated, which is a pleasing parallel between how tones are created for dark ambient albums, and the subject matter of hybrid-creation. If I was drifting in space and the S.S. Moreau offered rescue, I’d be game for that, even knowing how things would turn out. It sure beats starving to death or turning into an icicle as depressurization occurs.

Visit the S.S.Moreau page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also check out the track Monsters Manufactured below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: S.S. Moreau

Album Artist: Scott Lawlor & Mombi Yuleman

Released: 8 Jan 2021

Dark Ambient Review: Life Passes Slowly Unto Death

Review by Casey Douglass

Life Passes Slowly Unto Death Album Cover

When thinking or talking about death, it often doesn’t take long for the topic of “lights at the end of the tunnel” to emerge, usually in relation to a near death experience or a glimpse of the afterlife. Life Passes Slowly Unto Death is a dark ambient album from Scott Lawlor, and on listening to it, this contrast between light and darkness soon came into my thoughts.

The opening track: “Life Passes Slowly Unto Death”, gets things moving with a gentle opening, but one with, to my ears, a faint screech. The tones that emerge seem to channel a kind of “The Angels are coming!” vibe, blaring, manifesting and fading again, only to rise once more. For me, this track brought to mind how dust motes floating lazily around a dark room might look when one stray ray of sunlight breaks into the gloom. This is one example of how the light vs darkness aesthetic seemed to emerge for me.

Where the first track conjured light, the second track, “As the Dying Process Begins, Comprehension of Mortality is Realized”, seemed to focus on the tunnel. Shrill, pulsing tones and warbles create a dark, chittering space. It almost takes on the aspect of a sacral chant at times, the insect-like chirrups joining a shimmery tone. I felt myself journeying along a dark tunnel, a very distant light always moving around the bend minutes before I reached the same curve. The second half of the track feels like an even darker, and at times, quieter space.

“Drifting Through Unsequenced Memories” is one of my favourite tracks. After a smooth, low opening, both deep and shrill, howl-like tones sound, joined by voices and whispers. There is a clattering and skittering, and it feels like a space of intangible things. A bendy, pulsing note seems to thread stronger voices together, like a narrative does to the words we tell ourselves. This track seemed to very amply illustrate its title, the listener feeling like they are drifting through a space of disjointed impressions, with some force, consciousness maybe, trying to make sense of them.

The last track that I will mention by name is another favourite: “Whisperings Far Beyond the Veil Call You Home”. High chiming notes ring out in this soundscape, beginning to warp after some time. The echoing space is soon filled with a stuttering wind and bird-tweet-like whispers, giving way to a low pulsing that thrums through the space. There is muted rustling and muffled movement, and an ominous metal clanking at times. This track brought to mind a graveyard, the living and the dead brushing up against each other, the occasional communication getting through to one side or other.

Life Passes Slowly Unto Death is an album of dark spaces and liminal places. The soundscapes felt more dark than light, but the molecules of brightness do stop the whole thing feeling too oppressive. I found it to be calming, introspective and intriguing, and if you like dark ambient music themed around death or what might come after it, you should head over to Bandcamp and check out Scott’s album below.

Visit the Life Passes Slowly Unto Death page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Life Passes Slowly Unto Death

Album Artist: Scott Lawlor

Released: 18 Nov 2020

Dark Ambient Review – The Messenger

Dark Ambient Review – The Messenger

Review Written By Casey Douglass

Scott Lawlor’s The Messenger is a dark ambient album that for me, brings to mind the notion of some Luciferian being wending his way into the world to whisper his dark message into the ears of the receptive. Its soundscapes are clean and uncluttered, which is what you’d probably imagine when you hear that it was created with one take improvisations.

Album Description: This album was recorded over a weekend in October of 2015. All tracks, except 4 and 10 were one-take improvisations using only one sound for each track on the Roland fa08 with no overdubs. Track 4 was originally in two parts but I felt that it flowed better as one and track 10 had some additional piano. Track titles from the Messenger at dewinnefol.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/the-messenger/. 

I’m not sure how unduly the album art might have influenced me, but the streak of light was a theme that seemed to follow me with each track. As an example, The Heart Transcends Desire has specific tones that aided this. This track features a hanging undulating tone that conjured to mind a spinning disc of some kind, catching the light. It also had a tone that put me very much in mind of an old-fashioned alarm clock ringing, which further added to the effect.

Other tracks seemed to give me an 80s B-movie horror vibe. When Flesh and Bone Expire is one example of this, the bone-clinking sounds at one point being joined by the noise an energy weapon might make as it dissolves a human to powder. This track sounds a bit insectoid in places, and I’m sure I heard the thrum of a flying-saucer’s propulsion system at some point.

Playing into the whole “Lucifer” notion I first mentioned at the start, a few of the tracks sound a little “churchy” to me. Stepping Past a Graveyard's Stare is one, the sounds and notes sound sonorous and religious somehow, before things quieten at times into a more whimsical soundscape. It’s a bit like hearing strains of circus music as it reaches you in your coffin, six feet below the earth.

The Messenger is a very dark album that creates some interesting soundscapes with the minimum of fuss. Something all of the tracks seem to have in common is the love of waxing and waning sound, the way things build and then quieten, and then evolve into something similar but different. Some do feature the odd “overload” effect of the sound getting very harsh in key places, but for the most part, it’s a smooth ride.

If you are a fan of dark ambient that manages to be dark and uncluttered, you’d do well to check out The Messenger.

I was given a free copy of this album to review.

Album Title: The Messenger

Artist: Scott Lawlor

Released: Feb 27, 2018

Dark Music Review – Child of Rage

Dark Music Review – Child of Rage

Review by Casey Douglass

Album Description: The inspiration for this concept album is quite dark and disturbing inspired by the 1992 film of the same name which you can read about here. If you put the phrase into google, you can even find the movie which is recommended watching to further get a sense of what I hope to convey with the 7 tracks on this album. This film invaded my psyche for weeks, even haunting my dreams and it was at that point that I felt that I had to create my own interpretation of the movie. At first, I was going to go for the noise approach but after some attempts, I didn't feel that it worked out so well so I scrapped what I had done and went back to the drawing board and came up with the tracks you're about to hear. Track 4 was inspired by the original music composed for the movie by Gerald Gouriet. Track 5 was inspired by the music of Rasalhague, in particular, his Rage inside the Window album.

I’d not heard of the film that inspired Scott in the creation of Child of Rage, but a few minutes spent searching the web soon showed it to be something that would likely stick with anyone. Unlike a good number of people though, rather than just shrug it off as time passed, Scott created something that channelled his own feelings and ideas, re-framing it with his own take on the subject, and that’s always a very cool thing.

Child of Rage is a dark ambient album that, to me, evoked a kind of 80s horror aesthetic, so even though I know what inspired it, most of the tracks conjured up images from those kinds of films. It makes great use of various tones to create sinister soundscapes that wax and wane, like the light of a full moon might when battling with a heavy fog. Piano notes add melody too, sometimes giving lightness to the mental vistas created, and sometimes adding a hint of chaotic madness as well.

The first track, An Evil Shadow Lurking in the Night, is one of my favourites and typifies what I mean in the previous paragraph, creating and growing a swell of subtle threat that taps into that old school horror vibe. Pulsing bass, high tones, and piano notes stretch the soundscape into something in which you can almost taste the mist and detect the shifting shadow of a silhouette that wasn't there when you last looked. The piano notes turn frenetic and discordant later in the track, keeping a rhythm but adding lashings of mad energy to things. The last part of the track holds a high tone, like a hang-man’s noose waiting for a neck to choke, before quietening into a quieter state of menace.

Rage That Can Kill, the third track, is another I wanted to mention specifically. It begins with a pulsing vibrating drone, a bit like the insane idling a strange kind of hell-machine might make. A resonant tone builds to a fairly steady ‘ahhh’ like sound, a hollowness entering into the mixture shortly after. The crashing of cymbals grabs the attention more tightly, and a high pitched sound pierces the soundscape like a moth being impaled by a pin. This track gave me the notion of a killer finally getting the victim, the subtle lightness that emerges after the violence of the cymbals seeming to hint at the ‘peace’ the victim might now have. This lightness dimmed or soured a little near the end though, so maybe they didn’t find the peace they were looking for.

Track five, Uninhabitable Conditions, is another track with a dark, vibratory opening, but also has a buzzing swarm-like tone. What I most liked about this track was that the whole thing seemed to be underpinned by a relatively fast pulsing effect, every swell of tone or rumble of bass imbued with this energy. It gives the whole track a pace and punchiness that rocks the brain. I enjoyed this immensely.

These were the tracks that I wanted to be most detailed about, but the others on Child of Rage all fit and expand on the themes and textures that run throughout. I will give a little shout out to Dark Repose for its creepy and warped music-box tones though.

Child of Rage is an atmospheric and moody album that, if your brain was a nice bowl of cereal, would pour over just the right amount of rich, hair-tangled blood. Not enough to make the cereal too soggy, but enough to make it something that seeps into the mind in a most agreeable way. Visit the Child of Rage page on Bandcamp at this link for more info and to have a listen.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Child of Rage

Album Artist: Scott Lawlor

Released: April 21, 2016

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