ninehertz

It has been an incredible year for tales of folklore and nature through the medium of pastoral drone from the UK and Ireland - records by Haress, Rún, A-Sun Amissa and Greet have all told their stories in stunning ways. That Smote add their own offering here will come as no surprise to anyone with even slightest acquaintance to their recordings to date.

And yet for all of the incredible highs provided in Smote’s records prior, Songs from the Free House feels like their crowning achievement. There’s not a moment where it isn’t absorbing, crafting its own magic at every turn.

You hear their skill from the first track, as quiet cosmic drones are joined by flutes, as the volume rises and a song of depth flowers from out of that disparate opening, somehow both warm and bringing with it a cover of darkness. Across the record, it never fails to tangle you within its tendrils in what feels close to a spiritual experience.

It feels massive and alive. Scorching white heat noise and febrile atmospheres are whipped into a storm through multi-instrumental additions, audibly surrounding you. There are elements of Earth at one point with its guitar driven drone, dramatic even within its steady pace.

The final track takes another turn – metronomic but noise led, it is less organic than before, leading to a slightly uneasy lull in which it traps you, a jitteriness entering to take you into the darkness one final time. It opens mid-way, waves of industrial and rock and drone crashing into each other, the aftershocks creating the underpinning rumble, yet somehow, within all of this, there’s a morose beauty peeking through, a ray of light shot through this unique prism that is profound.

This may not be heavy in the traditional sense, nor even in comparison to the doom-inflected earlier works of Smote, but heaviness is more than a base metal term, and this has a weight to it from another source, a power to it generated in the darkness it seeks to bottle. It is album as ritual, and nigh on perfect.