I still haven't understood why time has worn us down so much to the core, almost digging beyond to search for a light that perhaps doesn't even exist. There is always something industrial and cemented but with such ridiculous fragility that it's endearing. Industrial not in the musical sense, but as a setting, abandoned warehouses left to themselves next to warehouses under construction that very slowly, piece by piece, will be shiny and already useless.
Cement. Cement veined with cracks that no one will appreciate. Everyone except me. Grey cement under a clear sky turns life into an old photograph of our grandparents. Hard, tenacious, and strong cement. With one hand I wipe away the dust and feel more optimistic, as if I managed to improve a situation that would otherwise have remained the same forever; I haven't stained the wall, I haven't marked the material, I've just stirred up a bit of dust in the wind, leaving a touch of myself that will remain only within me.
It's impossible, it's not difficult, to explain what Frigid Stars is to me. This record is no longer just a record, it is a mental state so strong and penetrating that it doesn't leave you and gnaws at your mind with such energetic, yet equally slow, violence that it leaves wounds perpetually raw. The flesh, in these ten tracks, bleeds sadness and melancholy, red streams flowing in slow motion and rewinding in irregular waves.
Hardcore, yes, because this is what we are talking about, the Codeine come directly from that American HC scene, surpassing the limit of supersonic speed and feeding on what will later be called post-rock. Slowing down, slowing down, sl o w i n g d o w n, sl o w i n g d o w n more and more, until reaching an extreme of rock music that is generally distinguished under the name slowcore.
A side note, if I may, is to mention Cave In: with each chorus after that snare hit and the subsequent void that stops the heart for an indefinite time close to infinity, right in that moment lies all the music of Codeine. Silence as a musical element perhaps forgotten for too long. So it's not the spray paint colors on the walls or the grooves on the trees that leave those indelible marks that fill the heart with passion, but a gesture with the hand that raises something insignificant and imperceptible that the wind carries high, in that silence you find Frigid Stars.
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By ZiOn
Frigid Stars is a perfect and innovative album, where in each of its ten songs you can feel a sense of melancholy and despair almost taken to excess.
With their first work, Codeine offers a revolution in the way of making music, and perhaps bands like the later Low would never have existed without them.