Unto Ashes: Grave Blessings (CD) #CDSale

Product Description

Gothic / Medieval / Apocalyptic Folk
Grave Blessings, the fourth full-length album from Unto Ashes is easily their most powerful and emotional work to date. It is a virtual essay in “blood-lit” music, exquisitely created, performed, and recorded. Once again, Unto Ashes reveals their signature combination of sublime vocal harmonies and characteristically unorthodox instrumentation: hurdy-gurdy, dulcimers, cello, French horn, acoustic and electric guitars, and vast drums and percussion. Grave Blessings presents fifteen “offerings” to the living and the dead, to those who are loved, and to those who are lost. “In Memory of D’Drennan” – written in response to the suicide of the beloved Regent of New York’s Vampire court – is so seductive, so infectious, that it seems destined to become THE unintentional hit on the dance floors of goth clubs from Gotham to Leipzig. Three highly unlikely covers, including The Cure’s venerable “The Drowning Man” (here performed on acoustic instruments), an Apocalyptic folk version of “The Way of the World” (written by the influential, now-defunct Punk band Flipper), and finally a spectacular version of QNTAL’s “Frühling” in which instruments from three continents (Appalachian dulcimer, church organ, and dumbec) are impossibly employed; and yet the effect is unmistakably victorious.

More about the songs:
The album begins regally with a triumphant performance of “Tous Esforciez,” a 13th-century masterpiece of the Troubadour era, here sung in Old French and performed on original medieval instruments. The listener is then taken to the frozen North with the sublime, frozen acoustic dirge “Winter Born.” The harrowing, yet defiant, “Tortured by Rose Thorns” is an astonishing, truly original piece of music which transcends the seething borders of Black Metal, and positions Unto Ashes at the vanguard of “blood-lit” music. And although “In Memory of D’Drennan” was written in response to the suicide of the beloved Regent of New York’s Vampire court, the song is so seductive, so infectious, that it seems destined to become THE unintentional hit on the dance floors of goth clubs from Gotham to Leipzig. “Emptiness” is simple, yet epic; performed on acoustic guitar, cello, French horn, and voice, it is both painfully honest and painfully intimate; it may be one of the first true “folk-songs” of the modern-day Apocalypse; the one “true” folk-song on the album is “Four Loom Weaver,” a rarely performed 19th-century Irish lament on starvation. “The Turning” is a piano and cello composition of flawless construction, created for a film, either forgotten, or not yet remembered. Another “filmic” piece is the jewel-like “Three Haiku” which is sung in ancient Japanese and features hypnotic Balalaika and soaring soprano vocals, once again deceptively simple in construction, but festooned with garlands of “fractured-mirror” ornamentation. Although entirely instrumental, the despairing “Four More Years” is an unmistakable indictment of what has become an endless cycle of governmental futility — and the perils of ignorance. To these are added three highly unlikely covers, including The Cure’s venerable “The Drowning Man” (here performed on acoustic instruments), an Apocalyptic folk version of “The Way of the World” (written by the influential, now-defunct Punk band Flipper), and finally a spectacular version of QNTAL’s “Fruhling” in which instruments from three continents (Appalachian dulcimer, church organ, and dumbec) are impossibly employed; and yet the effect is unmistakably victorious, as if Unto Ashes have at last declared, in perfect unison: “We shall celebrate, with such fierce dancing, the death of YOUR institutions!” A mysterious “Banishment Spell” at the end of the album releases the listener temporarily from captivity — until the next.