lista zespołów Doom Black An Autumn For Crippled Children Lost

Post rock/black metal band An Autumn for Crippled Children have made quite the mark in the metal underground with their debut album aptly titled Lost. The band adds their own unique twist on the post black explosion of recent times, creating an interesting album full of gorgeous melancholia.

Compared to other post black metal bands, An Autumn for Crippled Children are noticeably less “pretty.” Even though the music itself is quite light and airy, the melodies themselves are much darker than the norm. The guitars carry with it a faint influence of doom metal, allowing for a greater sense of emotional weight to shine through. The overall tempo of the music is quite slow, focusing on a much more grueling doom metal pace than a blistering black metal one. This gives the music a dark and tired air to it, the musicians seem exhausted, and the slow pace of the music captures a wonderfully dark and dismal tone to it.

The vocals are quite distorted and incredibly anguished, sounding like a more tortured Georg Börner. Unfortunately, the album page doesn’t list the lyrics so I am as of now unaware of what he is screaming about. However, I can assume that the lyrics deal with oft covered subjects such as depression and isolation. The album title in particular hints towards the content of the lyrics, the title “Lost” is incredibly well fitting. The music itself carries with a sense of Lost, subdued beauty. Ethereal guitar notes chime out of the thick fog whilst the vocalist screeches out at the listener like some unseen, spiritual entity. All of this comes together to create an aura of mystery and wonder, the overall meaning of Lost is quite ambiguous as a whole, requiring the reader to forge their own meaning through what the music communicates to them. As such, I consider Lost a deeply personal album, as though the listener’s emotions were surgically designed during the creation of this album. Indeed, the music itself is incredibly emotional, the guitar melodies are heart wrenching to say the least and the vocals are certainly passionate and anguished. All of these elements come together to create an atmosphere of loss and mourning as the album title so perfectly represents.

The keyboards are a delightful inclusion to this album, creating soft, melancholic undertones that resonate throughout the thick, misty atmosphere. They never sound cheesy or out of place, instead they exist in perfect symbiosis with the rest of the instrumentation. One point I think is particularly worthy of note is that each instrument can be heard clearly. Unlike many other black metal albums, the bass is largely audible, creating destructive undercurrents to the rest of the music. Thankfully, none of the albums rawness is sacrificed to make room for all the instruments. The guitar tone is suitably misty and distorted, vocals are quite hazy, sounding particularly g rim and vile.

The depressive black metal influence present throughout Lost has more in common with a band such as Lifelover rather than Hypothermia or Trist. There’s a definite depressive rock vibe present throughout Lost, indeed the songs are relatively accessible and lack a lot of the inaccessibility of much of the depressive underground. One way this is not like Lifelover is the vocals, which are fairly one sided throughout. However, I see the vocals as only another instrument within the mix and find their monotonous portrayal of the songs emotionally engaging. Riffing wise, An Autumn for Crippled Children are quite original, there’s a definite post rock influence to some of the leads, whilst at other times a doom influence becomes apparent as well. The guitar lines are well written and diverse, working wonderfully in conjunction with the rest of the music. The guitar tone also helps bring the post rock influence into the forefront, with a tone akin to the British band Fen.

Whilst An Autumn for Crippled Children might (understandably) be written off as another bog standard depressive black metal band, due to their name and the album’s title, An Autumn for Crippled Children isn’t a band that should be judged on aesthetics alone. Although all the visual signs point towards Lost being another generic depressive record, the content of the music is most certainly not the case. With an interesting mix of genres ranging from dreamy shoegaze, crushing doom metal, soothing post rock and desolate black metal, Lost is an unusual and interesting hybrid of many different genres that work wonderfully in harmonic synthesis with one another. Highly recommended.