Don’t you just absolutely love when split releases reveal some new band or musician that completely changes how you listen to certain types of music or even just end up being what you need to listen to at the moment that you sit down and listen to it? Luckily for me (and you if you have already heard this split), Preternatural is exactly the above scenario and much more; please, allow me a moment to step back and explain that for the last few weeks the A Death Cinematic portion of this split has been playing a great deal in my stereo while I have been almost completely neglecting the Ekca Liena portion of this disc (not out of some slight to Ekca Liena but rather due to my excitement at listening to new songs from A Death Cinematic).
Boy was that a stupid mistake, because after finally sitting down with Ekca Liena’s contribution to Preternatural, I immediately became transfixed by the first song (“A Dense Collapse”) and its swirling ambiance that just fully immerses you in this sonic landscape that sounds so warm and inviting; if you shut everything out and turn this track completely up it is the most pleasant sensory depravation experience that you could ever have (save for the sound of course), and I literally feel like everything that I was thinking about just melted away. The strummed guitars of “Mid Life Aftermath” and “With Invisible Walls” (save for its ending which almost boarders on a vicious harsh noise assault) only further draw my attention deeper into the gentle waves of instrumental haziness that Ekca Liena offers here; these songs feel like mellow simplicity that just washes your mind like some strange hot spring in a serene setting.
A Death Cinematic is no slouch either with its part of Preternatural that amounts to four new compositions of a guitar driven apocalypse, but this time around the sound also expands and the gem of these entries into this projects’ discography has to be “The Winds Whip Torn Clouds To Rain And Soot” and its more pensive moments (amongst the seemingly random chaos that occurs at points during the song)with gentle strumming and what can only be described as a mournful drone that sounds more like a Theremin than a guitar; though “In The Fields On Fire, Watch Them Turn To Black Smoke” is certainly another highlight that is not to be missed as well (A Death Cinematic seems to be slowly branching out in the sounds that it employs to their credit) as the song lays down some rather ominous melodic moments.
Preternatural is one of the more impressive split albums that I have come across in quite some time as both parties offer exciting sounds that both tantalize and titillate the aural senses; but what most impresses me is that these two artists offer two different spectrums of a similarly droning path that brings them both together in a well paired offering. If you are looking to see what two up and coming artists are cranking out in the droning ambient field, do not miss out on Preternatural because it is a good starting point for both artists.
