Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull [review]

1fastdog.

Posted to Music on Mon Mar 24, 2008 at 07:11:20 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

Earth's newest slab o' guitar drones finds the band making a cinematic statement and throwing open the doors for fans new to their sound with their most accessible album yet. For those with adventuresome tastes and a liking for slowly unfolding guitar notes, The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull, the latest album from Drone specialists Earth, will be sure to please.

While the band labors under the Drone/Doom Metal monikers, this shouldn't discourage folks from giving them a listen as they make some truly beautiful, yet somehow frightening, music.

The new album is entirely instrumental, so those put off by the vocal screaming and grunting that passes for singing in some of the other bands plying these waters needn't worry over that potential barrier. And really, with the cinematic scope of these songs, vocals would only serve to distract from the slowly revealed melodies. While this album is rooted in the structures that classify it as Drone-based music - notes are repeated and recycled and held for long amounts of time - there's also a much more melodic sensibility floating around. There are also elements of Gospel and Jazz - indeed, Jazz guitarist Bill Frisell is a featured guest - in abundance, along with an obvious debt to the mood-invoking soundscapes of Ennio Morricone. While you couldn't really classify these songs as "catchy" in the traditional sense, they definitely grab your ears much like traditional Pop music does if you're willing to listen. And willing to listen is what it all comes down to as these songs are a wee bit lengthy comparatively speaking; the shortest tune clocks in at just under 6 minutes-in-length while the longest  surpasses the 9 minute mark. While those aren't epic lengths within the genre, they are longer than most ears are used to hearing. Couple that with the fact that there are no vocals on this album, and you've got a listening experience that at best seems counterintuitive. Yet, Earth pulls it off with style and aplomb, this musical beast-of-burden that haunts with its beauty as it frightens with its menace. Here's what Pitchfork had to say:

Still, Bees is the biggest, cleanest, and most flagrantly melodic record Earth's ever recorded.
The result is an imperceptible relay between keys, guitars, bass, and drums, with any given melodic line handed off three or four times in the course of a song. Over time, the parts stay the same, the instruments change, and time slows down-- after a while, the songs shrink down to exact moments, static pictures that morph so gradually you never spot the change.

Tracklist and final thoughts:

1. Omens And Portents 1: The Driver (MP3)
   
2. Rise To Glory
   
3. Miami Morning Coming Down II (Shine)
   
4. Engine Of Ruin
   
5. Omens And Portents II: Carrion Crow
   
6. Hung From the Moon
   
7. The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull

This is the most sonically adventurous album I've heard in quite some time. It's amazing what kind of sounds that Earth can get by squeezing so much out of (apparently) so little. The spaces between the sustained guitar notes are sometimes as interesting as the notes themselves, if that makes sense - sometimes what's not there is just as important as what's there. This is an album that begs to heard in the whole, not as something that you'd throw into a large playlist on your iPod and hit shuffle.

If there's a detracting element involved here it's this; some may find the album repetitive at first and second glance. Although that's part of the beauty, it may be off-putting to less involved ears.
Haunting, fragile, echoing, shimmering sound that evokes a big landscape painted by the setting sun and the eventual fall of night, this album is a soundtrack to a film that's yet-to-be-made. This is easily the best album that I've heard this year. 9 out of 10.

The back history of the band is very interesting, but it's too long and involved to detail in this review. Those interested can meander around the links provided and read up on the evolution of this band and the musical genre that they almost single-handedly inspired.