Cerberus Shoal
Homb

"Harvest" is the disorienting opening that throws open the gates to Homb, the offspring of American band Cerberus Shoal, dated 1999; on a dark and noise-infused background progressively stand out punches of keyboard and electronic mutterings, subdued and inhuman beats, a clattering of aquatic, liquid chains. The cacophony summoned forth is only apparent: each of these torn and beaten images from an nonexistent film strip is reminiscent of the bleeding and chaotic interior of an animal body, a reddish and disordered magma that from afar changes robe and solidifies until it forms a hypnotic unity. Hours pass. Omphalos. Linked by an umbilical cord to its preceding sister, Omphalos plays with a perennial and evanescent post-rock path that grows in diameter and thickness, acquiring discreet but persuasive percussive fragments, enriching itself with ferns in the form of guitars that arpeggiate cleanly, unaware and submissive to a rhythmic artificial throbbing rising from stony depths, returning after a timid glance at the outside world, terrified by sinister incursions of fat brass. The path widens. A contained explosion, signaled to the observer by a not-too-distorted chord and a dying trumpet crescendo. From the path, or rather, from its edges, red jaws peek. The journey does not change, the slight and sacred unrest of the debut is not appeased, the expanded atmosphere that reigns over everything does not show signs of collecting itself, mutilating from its own incapacity to remain locked inside a cross. We are near the hovels of Godspeed, or some fire lit by the Boards Of Canada. The brink of a sacred circle is indicated by the buzzing of a tribal flute and surrounded by elf-like reverb. Omphalos dies.

The triptych of Homb begins, Myrrh. Myrrh (Waft) opens with spaced and ethereal guitar notes. A passing knight makes his filthy spurs sparkle, immediately robbed by Cerberus for the pearl Myrrh. More dilations, more post-rock, sacred, pagan, elevated by a very slow flute that seems to emerge from the eternal wrinkles of a glacier, distant, lost in the lukewarm lava of an undefined elsewhere, a lost Eden where even man participated in divinity. Two voices call, whisper, repeat a mantra, while the music remains unaware, does not change its course, does not heed the fragile but determined lament, unwilling to acknowledge knots in its dignified and religious unfolding.

The clattering of cymbals opens Myrrh (Loop). The uneasiness of "Harvest" returns. Again metallic laments; a drunken, alienated trumpet is evoked. A loop of bass and trumpet forms from nothing, repeating throughout the entire course of the stone Myrrh, while a trumpet carves Iberian furrows of pain and fragmentation, rising sweet and melancholic to lead the obsessive progression of the dance. The loop subsides. It’s a joyful and mournful arpeggio that now accompanies the limping run of the trumpet, while the ambient melds with the sound of a cricket and the thin whistle of a muezzin without followers demanding attention. Magical folk, barely perceptible wha-wha dance, sudden but almost expected mutations. The loop returns, accompanied by peremptory and relentless drums. Myrrh (Loop) dies. An arpeggio reminiscent of Agalloch’s folk side opens Myrrh (Reprise). The impression is immediately abandoned when a calm yet wildly bouncing sitar begins its journey through the uterine folds of Homb. Again the muezzin intones syllables, the sacred song of thousands and thousands of ancestors who lived in the Earth's bosom before the eternal corruption. Again the trumpet marries with the metallic and hidden roll of goat-skin percussion, tracing the lines of a tapestry that starts from a fjord to caress starry eastern shores. The connection to its two sisters Myrrh returns with a liquid and trembling series of chords, disturbed by descending effects and an unsettling yet sunny sensation that has a brief existence. Slow and distorted chords bring Myrrh (Reprise) to herald the end of Homb. Among terrors and electronic wails, Homb comes to an end, after being born and growing between post-rock and folk, noise and ambient, always ineffable and pervaded by a sacred and mystic aura.

A masterpiece.