My Dark Lake - Cold Slumber

After a hard day at work doing whatever a Steve may ought to do at a hard day of work, I have decided to lay my ass down in bed and look at some dark ambient music under My Dark Lake, a Russian dark ambient project that has me quite floored at the moment. There's a lot of classical elements being played with in the songs, and it's very pretty. Although, pretty isn't necessarily a word that I am acquainted with, therefore you really shouldn't be questioning my judgment. Nor should you ever.

In Der Dunkelheit is the first song on the album, and got into my head with its lovely organ sounds, and otherwise church sounding atmosphere.There's very faint humming going on in the background, along with a wind instrument being plucked away, with bells occasionally chiming their way in. In any case, this was a great start to the album, and I wanted to see what more they had in store for me.

I liked the epic sounding tune of the next song, almost as if it fit within the realm of martial industrial, but cooled off after a while and went into a sorta dull ambient tune for the final minute and a half. Die Schlafende Höhle actually turned me off some with the whining sound of whatever the hell is making that noise. It's almost like spirits are begging to be released, but the spirits are all a bunch of dumb, blond bimbos who don't realize that they're dead yet. However, it does redeem itself in the second half of the song with the return of the organ.

Now, I loved the beginning of Die Trauer, for the piano work combined with the synth really got to me, however, when the piano disappeared, I actually wound up saying to myself, "Why did it stop?" Thankfully, the piano returned later in the song, and I was more than grateful for that little bit.

I don't have much to say about Sacred Touch other than it utilizes a wind pipe, and is not the best song on the album. I liked the next song, however, which was Thawing Of A Gray Haze, as it brings back the piano work and the bells once more in a slow and soothing dark ambient vibe, and it worked wonders.

Cold Slumber, the title track of the album, slows things down even further, however, the wonderful piano work makes another stand. It bounces of a note here and there every two or three seconds, and the chilling background ambience makes it all the better. It sounds like there's humming going on, except it's so faded that it becomes mythical.

And, the final track on the album, known, of course, as the Epilog, kind of gets rid of the dark ambient flare, and goes into a more Gothic tone, really focusing on the bells, and kind of is influenced once more by Martial Industrial. It sounds like it's a farewell song to soldiers marching to war against the demons of Hell. As an added bonus, there's a remix at the end of Die Schlfende Höhle, and, well, it kind of has some tribal stuff going on in places, but I really didn't enjoy it.

Now, all in all, I haven't really praised this album. More or less, I've been describing how the songs sound, and that's hard to do when it comes to music. Nonetheless, this album is fucking beautiful. As a debut for an unknown project (at least unknown in the sense that I've never heard of them before), I gotta hand it to them. They managed to capture my attention, and hold it tight. I will be listening to them again, and if you haven't listened to them yet, you most definitely should. Sep 02 2013