ninehertz

Bismuth were a behemoth of doom, pioneers of the drone end of the genre and one of the greatest bands in the burgeoning UK doom underground. When they split, as one half of the band (Tanya Byrne) moved to the US, it was genuinely sad to think we’d here no sequel to The Slow Dying of the Great Barrier Reef, no further pairings with the likes of Legion of Andromeda or Vile Creature, and maybe most of all never face the wind tunnel oppressive experience of their live outings again.

Bathypelagic, as a minimum, are the silver lining. Perhaps inevitably, Byrne has re-emerged in another outfit, into the Seattle doom scene. There’s a familiarity in the two-piece make up and the realisation that Lahar, their debut, consists of just one song, passing twenty-four minutes in length.

It starts as a shimmering of light, like being in the centre of a gong bath, with minimal instrumentation of cymbals and guitar. They start to gather a weight and the slightest momentum and by five minutes it has been joined by a scarring static that threatens the peacefulness of its beginning. A minute later the drums signal a charge to release, kicking into gear, vocals from out of what is now an aural mire shrieked, distant yet powerful.

It is a wonderful doom sound now, visceral and raw yet with a warmth to it that grabs you, this passage truly fantastic. A rare burst of adrenaline then powers things forth in an unexpected grunting, grinding binge, clicking into a fast groove. It starts to wind down, settling only by around the halfway point of the song – yet all the earth has been overturned, the airs full of the resulting dust; it will require time for the calm of its early moments to return. The ambience is now from a different place, a turn to doom edging on drone for several minutes.

The finale, from around twenty minutes, brings the reappearing vocals, loaded with venom, something akin to funeral sludge if that were a thing. It self-generates such an aura it is impossible not to be impacted by it, ending the song on this weirdly blackened euphoria, a tingling sense as it fades to a close.

You feel moved as you consider what you have undertaken in the seconds of quiet after. We have lost the might and majesty of Bismuth but gained a Bathypelagic, who, one song in, have already made a masterful marker of prodigious doom.