Trees

Lights Bane

Crucial Blast 2008
 

Lights Bane from Portland's blackened doom monstrosity, Trees, is comprised of two lengthy tracks (15 and 12 minutes respectively) of droning feedback suffocation.  The riffs on both of the tracks are cyclopean in their size yet unabashedly slow.  The songs plod along like a sloth made of granite, grinding as it sluggishly moves its unbelievably heavy limbs.  Lights Bane opens with the ominous reverberations of a strangled guitar before striking like a cobra with acrid vocals and lethargic drums.  There is not much musically that separates the two tracks, Nothing and Black.  They are both paced in an unhurried and deliberate fashion and are drowning in an abyss feedback drenched muck.  At times I am reminded somewhat of Winter's Into Darkness though at a slightly different tempo.  A good example of this comparison is around the 9-minute mark of Black as the drums and guitars sonically hammer away like a wounded rhinoceros.  A highlight of the album are L. Smith's vocals which are foaming and rabid.  Lights Bane creates an atmosphere of glacially slow droning noise, a musical accompaniment to a nightmarish psychotic break.  However, while successfully creating that environment of audio induced mania, I don't truly find Trees all that inspiring compared to some of their contemporaries.  It is an album I can get lost in given the right mindset, however on its own, it is not a journey that I feel compelled to take.  Though not horrible Lights Bane is far from brilliant.