Echoes of Yul - Cold Ground

Those people that know me well enough can confirm that I have strong metal scene roots in my musical taste. Being kind of a young headbanger twenty years ago, even today I can find a spiritual connection to my past while listening to different heavy guitars bands. Besides all the old-school bastards that I use to listen quiet frequently, I lay my hands from time to time on some special and relatively unknown acts which can and actually DO break boundaries of the specific genres. I can honestly admit that I have never ever heard about the project under the name Echoes of Yul, but this name had some hidden radiance that forced me to insert the cd inside my sound system. I had few disappointments in my life from this kind of so called "blind dates" with unknown artists but this time it is definitely not that case. "Cold Ground: is much closer to the "blast in the head" item then to any kind of disappointment while this sonic soundscape flows out of my speakers.

So, what is that special about this album that made me listen to it the whole week without a break? Being an acid mixture of different styles and influences like drone metal, ambient, industrial, stoner and psychedelic rock, the experiments with sound are made in right proportions creating a balanced and highly entertaining record. The track's structure is very diverse keeping me in constant progressive drift. There are few main elements which stick out strongly out of 'Cold Ground' and make its content that remarkable. The first component and maybe the most significant of all is a heavy bass session. Slow bass guitar riffs fill the air from the very beginning and keep rolling over and over for more than an hour of the album run; they lead most of the tracks creating a truly gloomy atmosphere. The second and not less important component is an extreme depth of the sound, crafted with a special passion building a solid basement for all other effects.

Most of the compositions have a certain melody created by the bass guitar with slight additions of a lead guitar here and there, but this melody has a straight drone origin in the first place. While keeping the sense of one solid piece of musical creation, every track has its own face and becomes recognizable after even the first time that I listen to 'Cold Ground'. One of the many possible advantages is a thin balance that is implemented between the running time of each composition and the chase after the droning effect which usually extends tracks to be very long and hypnotic. If you look for the meditative experience, don't expect to find it here. Better turn you attention towards Nadja or some other drone metal projects, because Echoes of Yul is not there.

One more element that characterizes this album is a complete absence of vocals which is a strange thing when you talk about metal based record. It disturbed me a little bit after the first album run, but I had to experience it three or four times to understand that vocals are totally not needed here. The music is full of different sampled voices and they definitely fit into the structure to outshine the possibility of some poetry covering this magnificent album.

What sets the connection between the metal and industrial scene is the constant usage of electronic special effects and background ambience. Pure experimental tracks present there as well like "Haunebu", "The Plane" or "Crosses" sharping that touch of post-apocalyptic atmosphere which drives the record towards the world of mystery bound with machinery.

By all means, Echoes of Yul succeeded to push the right buttons inside my head. I would have expected to receive such a cd from a different label, more in the vein of Beta-Lactam Ring and not Avantgarde Music which is mostly associated with various mainstream genres of metal. But all the props go to the guys from Avantgarde that were able to come over such a project and grant the proper stage for the special talent and vision of those Poland based residents. May 15 2013