Similar to a snake shedding its skin,
Cold Body Radiation has lost more and more of its black metal influence as time has gone on. Starting off firmly in the blackgaze territory with their album
The Great White Emptiness, the follow up release
Deer Twilight saw the band exploring softer and less metal oriented sounds, the band lost a substantial amount of black metal influence yet it was still there, but in a significantly decreased dosage. The new Ep titled The Longest
Shadow Ever Cast drops all metal elements entirely to create a pure shoegazer record, devoid of any aggression or hatred. Anyone who has been following the blackgaze scene knows that the transition from black metal to fully fledged shoegaze isn't a rare occurrence, so it should come to no surprise to anyone that
Cold Body Radiation's new release sounds like this. This is calm and sweet atmospheric shoegazing to the core, lacking any black metal venom or bite. It's still clearly
Cold Body Radiation but it feels somewhat lacklustre compared to their other works, however it's still quite nice for generic Slowdive worship, the atmosphere is quite powerful so there's nothing really wrong with it per say, it's just not up to standards with their earlier works.
The Longest
Shadow Ever Cast is basically all the soft moments of
The Great White Emptiness (and lawdy lawd are there a few) stretched out for an entire Ep. In theory it's a solid idea,
Cold Body Radiation has always been good with the quieter sections, yet when these moments aren't interspersed with elements of black metal, well the sound just isn't as good as what came before.
Cold Body Radiation were a great black metal/shoegaze/post rock hybrid band, yet the lack of black metal elements is a bit of a let down.
Despite this, I am fan of shoegaze music so I found a lot bit to enjoy in The Longest
Shadow Ever Cast. The dreamy instrumentals are really nice and add a lot to the atmosphere, the introduction for the title track being a particular highlight, with a wonderful shimmering lead over a solid bass guitar that creates an ethereal and trance like atmosphere. After this short introduction, it erupts into some wonderful shoegaze with just the right amount of distortion and melody, I love how the winding chords float over the bass guitar to create a hypnotic and wonderfully atmospheric affair. The clean vocals are a bit odd though, being a half spoken half sung delivery with a fair bit of distortion added it doesn't really suit the music underneath, I would much prefer a soothing voice reminiscent of Neige than what this guy is doing on here, it doesn't detract too much from the atmosphere but on the other hand it does nothing for it as well. But the music more than makes up for it, the track Last Days of Summer has one of the most beautiful introductions I've ever heard, the bass guitar is phenomenal in this track and the shimmering melodies are beyond beautiful. The vocals actually work quite nicely with this song as well which is quite special.
I get what
Cold Body Radiation are doing with The Longest
Shadow Ever Cast, it's clear the band is trying to remove themselves completely from the black metal scene, there's nothing wrong with bands exploring new grounds as long as they don't forget where they've come from. The Longest
Shadow Ever Cast is beautiful, there's no denying that, the music is powerful on the atmosphere, and heavy on how dreamlike it all is. Fans of shoegaze and post rock will definitely eat this up, most black metal fans can likely pass this up however because there's just nothing that the average black metal fan will dig up. Still, a great shoegaze/post rock record with a really nice atmosphere, what's not to like?
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