The title of Type O Negative’s first album is a perfect describer of Subrosa’s new record, For This We Fought the Battle of Ages. As the title, the album is lengthy, intricate, very complex, and immensely hefty. Just six songs span over an hour, proving how elongated, complex songs don’t have to be a snoozefest. Subrosa were always an exciting band, full of ideas, vicious melodies, pounding atmosphere, and unusual offerings. Their second full-length, No Help For The Mighty Ones, brought me into the world of sludge doom. The record was incredibly heart wrenching, coloring the world with dark gray spotted with occasional bright colors, property of violin melodies Subrosa uses so crafty.
The latest album, let’s call it The Battle Of Ages since the title is too damn long, shows the band’s evolution, an evolution that took a halt with More Constant Than The Gods (their third album) only to show its true colors on The Battle Of Ages. Violins are better fitted into tracks; they don’t sound like a gimmick, but rather like a proper addition to guitars and drums. Raw cleans have a primal attractiveness, found only in the ancient chants of cultures long forgotten, and thick as a brick riffs add to the already dreary atmosphere.
Every song has a defining feature, making them all unique entities with their own feelings and personalities, making them human. Despair Is A Siren, with its avalanche of different ideas, its flow consisting of many songs somehow fitted into one composition; Wound Of The Warden, with its wall shattering guitar riffs united with disharmonic violins; Black Majesty and its phenomenal intro that’ll make hair on your neck to rise and tremble; angelically dreadful colors of Killing Rapture, and the closer, Troubled Cells taking you five years back, back to No Help For The Mighty Ones and some merry, long forgotten days.
Rhythm can sometimes step into funeral doom territory, evoking the feel of those dreams where you run and run but don’t move an inch. Violins are incredibly used; their already mentioned dissonant melodies are a perfect fit for the style of Subrosa, giving the band a nuance of dark classical music, a distant gothic feel. The only shame is that growls are utilized not nearly enough, and that production gave drums too small place on the stage. There are other tiny admonitions; Wound of The Warden is a bit stretched, and the album is not an easy listening. To enjoy it as it deserves, you’ll have to focus solely on music; no other stimuli are allowed while The Battle Of Ages pours its muddy waters of doom. Subrosa, after one relatively weak album, returned with style giving us another sludge doom gemstone.
