ninehertz

The cover art has me convinced this will be Graveyard-style light-end proto-doom, but I’m mistaken, this is much heavier, doom nudging towards sludge at times, with some stoner rock in its lighter moments.

Sacri Suoni are an instrumental quartet from Milan and Time to Harvest, out on Electric Valley Records, is four tracks of elongated doom. Plow the Void is the first, slow sludge, more in a funeral doom manner than the turgid, loping steps of the genre norm. Very little happens, it exists purely to live in this overcast mood, which shows admirable commitment to the doom line, although it tires before its nine minutes end, particularly without the central focus vocals would bring.

Soothe lives up to its name, relatively speaking, creepy occult-doom fog encroached terrain with shimmering guitars eventually giving way into a surprisingly refreshing, light minimalist passage. There are even some vocals here – admittedly faint and ethereal but fitting with the sudden bright skies that have broken the clouds. It’s a cool, interesting split-personality track. Dissolve to Reunite in Varanasi is the shortest track but the least memorable, too close to the Electric Wizard template for comfort.

It ends on a high however with It Will Crumble Before Us. It’s the longest song, taking a few minutes in ambient build up before clearly entering a more stoner rock side than before. It breaks down halfway, settling into a delicate, almost country and western guitar passage. It brings much needed variance, this side of Sacri Suoni shining through and possibly greater than their occult doom dual identity. It helps the album too, a cool, enjoyable journey through the varying avenues of stoner, doom and sludge.