Falls Of Rauros
The Light That Dwells in Rotten Wood

The cold was approaching, they could feel it. They felt it in their weary bones, in their fingers barely covered by worn-out gloves, in their feet, wrapped in what once were shoes. This wasn't the first year they were on that road, and even if they didn't know the month, they knew the cold would come. Time, that unknown entity: days piled up behind them, and without a point of reference, they all seemed the same, and even the sky, always leaden, and the landscape, gray and barren, didn't help to differentiate the moments that tiredly accumulated in their lives.

Every so often, a tree would collapse, a lifeless barren skeleton of what was once a lush creature, a metaphor for what was slowly happening to every man on that land, which now seemed to have turned its back on humankind. The man couldn't rest; his sleep was disturbed by nightmares reminding him how it all began: the fires in the night, the madness. And daytime was no better, spent wandering among car wrecks, ghost towns, and carcasses of living beings scattered everywhere. Primal violence was rampant, cannibalism was the only nutrition for many "men," although it was now more logical to speak of beasts. The two of them were staunchly resisting, moving along that road, sometimes hand in hand, he and his son, carrying a light in their hearts, a hope, a gleam that the father would try to protect at all costs. And when he thought of this, he caressed his old gun and wondered whether, when the time came, his little boy would be able to fire those two lone bullets.

The fog falls, and there they are, hand in hand, walking and talking about the sea and how it once was blue. They drag their feet more and more, and as they get lost in the misty horizon, the flame seems to fade, but then it reappears, flickering, a sign that life can exist anywhere, even in those apparently destined to become trees and rotten wood set to vanish from one day to the next.

We're still there, post-black metal, but not only. The Falls of Rauros seem to have a keen taste for melody and melancholy, oozing from the frequent quiet breaks that fill each of their songs. Between acoustic slowdowns and feral accelerations, between frenzied double kicks and sweet guitars, what stands before our eyes (or in our minds) is a landscape that appears desolate at first glance, where man has given up living according to "logical" laws and has relied more on his primordial survival instincts. "The Light That Dwells in Rotten Wood" is a splendid glimpse initially inaccessible, a peak that, once conquered, leaves us in awe of misty and endless panoramas. And forgive them if they get lost in too many digressions or seem not to get to the point: like a thick fog that envelops everything and makes everything uniform, the poignant melodies woven by these guys will know how to absorb any eventual gaps.