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SubRosa - More Constant Than The Gods (2013) (Full Album)

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• published: 28 Aug 2016
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Released in 2013, SubRosa's More Constant than the Gods is just about everything you'd want and expect from a follow-up to their frequently bludgeoning, emotionally merciless No Help from the Mighty Ones: more power, more beauty, more variety, more everything. Whereas No Help was punishingly heavy for long stretches, with islands of pretty reprieve, More Constant finds a cozy middle path between thunderous doom, gloomy folk and epic melodies, with long winding songs full of darksome moods of varying degrees of heaviness. Often in doom, the impulse can be to turn up and drown out, treating the song mostly as a reason for amplifier massages. On their third album, the fascinating Salt Lake City band are more meticulous than that, treating each number like its own opera. More Constant Than The Gods, moves and sways like the deck of a sinking ship, tilting from crushing riffs to night-sky expansiveness with a crucial ear for harmony. “Cosey Mo” builds from a bluesy riff into its protracted, four-minute climax of swirling violins and soaring vocals, as singer and songwriter Rebecca Vernon monastically repeats her mantra of “burning/instead of you.” She repeats that image, adding “ire” on closer “No Safe Harbor,” the year's sludgy piano ballad to beat, droning flute and electric strings flying high overhead. The opening song, "The Usher" is a strong introduction to this more varied style, beginning very quietly with a few sparse notes of guitar and aching violin weaving a thin, desolate tissue of sound behind a stripped-down vocal duet, which crumbles before a blisteringly savage guitar riff and an artillery battery of drums. After stomping everything in its path like a lumbering giant, the song shifts toward a more soaring, melodic doom metal sound and a quiet poetic interlude featuring lyrics and singing that can comfortably stand next to the greats of the second British folk revival. Not content to linger, the song picks up for a grand finale, with guitar, ornate violins and singing sounding out in dreadful unison. Throughout the album, dissonant sludge riffs, exquisitely arranged violin and vocal melodies, and moments of searing emotion live side by side, roped together with strong song craft and eerily resonant lyrics. Perhaps the best example is "Cosey Mo", which manages to be both crushingly sad and oddly uplifting, with lyrics that provoke both creeping horror and sympathy for its seemingly inhuman subject, without really defining what exactly he (or it) is. Generally, the lyrics on More Constant are more abstract and metaphysical than those of the earlier albums, less overtly political or conventionally psychological. The sorrowful chiming sound of "Affliction" makes for an unsettling and captivating listen that purges you into what's probably the most energetic song on the album. The sound of the entire album evokes such dark and strong imagery, with a landscape both heavy and doom-laden, but with an almost 19th-Century-like aesthetic. With every doommetal riff and soaring moan from the violins, SubRosa lays down an incredibly thick atmosphere. Themes of death, struggle, sorrow and foreboding are inescapable as you make your way through each of the album's six songs. A slow, relentless, descent into hell; an unending, pounding pull to the ground. As passionate as it is subdued, as political as it is poetic, as nuanced as it is blunt, as original as it is peerless. More Constant Than The Gods is a high-water mark for Subrosa, as well as among their peers. It thriftily balances tone, noise and nuance in a really, truly exciting way. Dreadlocked dudes with terrible tattoos: the ball is in your court. In a metal world filled with endless death-growl/breakdown/unintelligible sweep riffing, it's a relief to hear a band take its heaviness and hone it toward something truly engaging and unique. SubRosa bypasses the angst that is so prevalent in modern American metal and gets straight to the point: the world is fucking ending. To say that the album feels like an apocalypse brought upon by forgotten gods is an understatement. Doom metal at its finest, Folk metal at its grimmest. 1. The Usher 2. Ghosts Of A Dead Empire 3. Cosey Mo 4. Fat Of The Ram 5. Affliction 6. No Safe Harbor https://subrosausa.bandcamp.com/album/more-constant-than-the-gods https://subrosa.cc/ https://www.profoundlorerecords.com/products-page/plr-items/subrosa-more-constant-than-the-gods/