Year of No Light – Vampyr

May 7, 2013 • self-released

Man, Year of No Light used to be a pretty awesome band. Nord was cool, as was their split with Rosetta and East of the Wall. But lately, especially with the split with Altar of Plagues, something's gone horribly wrong.

If you were expecting another typical atmospheric sludge metal album here, you'd be wrong, and not really in a good way. Vampyr is instead a disjointed collection of mostly ambient and drone tracks, with the occasional post-rock segment and merely three tracks (and only parts thereof) with any "metal" sensibility to them.

And, okay, that's fine, they're free to produce whatever kind of music they want. But is this good? Heck no. Good ambient-drone-albums need purpose; they need drive; they need a sense of cohesion. This album has none of those things. Almost every track is uniformly dull and lifeless; some tracks, like "Ombres", play up a bit of tension but then fall flat at the end when no payoff actually arrives. On the whole, though, it's perfectly inoffensive; so as background music it works all right, except for the occasional mood whiplash caused by the short songs blazing past.

So, Year of No Light, next time you're thinking about putting out seventy-two mintues (ugh) of music, make sure it's something actually thought-out and composed, not a bunch of half-baked ideas and sketches. Something interesting, regardless of genre. You might be perfectly capable of making a good ambient drone album, but this isn't it.

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