Surrender to All Life Beyond Form

Dark Castle is a part-doom, part-sludge, part-drone, part-experimental metal band that first got me hooked after listening to their first LP, Spirited Migration. Generally, I'm not a big fan of the "doom" branch, because most of the time it seems like it is the antithesis to the idea of metal-- fast, brutal, abrasive, and so on. Doom metal usually just seeks to be as lethargic and gloomy as possible, and it leaves the least amount of room for technicality. A lot of doom metal bands are just repeated attempts at recreating Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath or Electric Funeral. However, this band manages to be unique, thoughtful, and innovative. The spirit of extreme metal is still here.

There are only two members in this band; Stevie Floyd on guitar/vocals and Rob Shaffer on drums. Instead of the typical baritone singing seen in doom metal, Stevie Floyd chooses to shriek like she is experiencing an inconceivable horror-- or maybe she is the inconceivable horror. Either way, it's a chilling sound and it really helps create the vast darkness of the album. I would best describe the guitar as chunky, sharp, and reverberating. It plays at varying tempos, ranging from textured droning chords to heavy sliding notes to dissonant clean notes. The drums play almost as powerfully as the guitar, but what it really does for the music is lay down the foundation for the entire atmosphere. Fills are not uncommon here, and the tempo changes very frequently. Synthesizers, piano, distortion, and other sounds play behind the music to create layered songs that really capture the listener. These musicians are very talented with their songwriting and equally talented with their instruments.

What really amazes me about this album is the variety. It's somewhat of a departure from their last album, but they take a far more psychedelic approach that sounds like an almost entirely different band. The first track (from which the album got its name), Surrender to All Life Beyond Form, sounds the most like Spirited Migration-- it is raw and almost groovy. The second track, Stare Into Absence, has to be one of the highlights of the album. It is somehow the slowest track on the album, but it just sounds fucking powerful and foreboding. There is even an acoustic track titled Create an Impulse, a dark ambient song titled Spirit Ritual, and a spoken-word synthesizer track titled To Hide Is to Die. These tracks are just as well done and just as dark as the metal tracks. The album ends on the perfect song, Learning to Unlearn. It is the most disorienting, and I think the drums really shine here by playing a polyrhthmic beat that sounds almost natural in spite of the cacophony. This album is relatively short, but it is 33:49 of unforgiving darkness.

This album has had a lot of negative reviews from multiple sources. The main thing I read-- and I read this a lot-- is that this is "pretentious" or "self-indulgent." It's a load of bullshit; it's basically a stupid way for the critic to say "it was progressive and experimental, but I didn't like it." I'm assuming that a group of metalheads have essentially operated under a herd mentality that reinforces the overall poor reception of this album, as much as most metalheads would love to think of themselves as individuals. It is beyond me why a drone band like Sunn O))) would get everyone's panties so wet, but yet this album goes virtually ignored. I would implore you to listen to it and decide for yourself, because in my opinion, this album is phenomenal. This band is two-for-two, and I anticipate that their next effort will be just as great.

Dark Castle's second full-length album is full of all of our favorite things about modern metal: odd timings, chorused vocals, and fuzzy, heavily textured guitars that create a deep atmosphere for the album. There are several interludes that rely on the ambience of processed vocals, piano, and sparse percussion, further emphasizing the atmosphere of the album. The extremely distorted guitar tones contrast with echoing, reverberated clean lines that are interspersed throughout the album.

The downside of the album is that it is completely forgettable. The songwriting is boring and wandering, matching the spaced-out sound by not knowing where it is going. I can't remember a single part of a song by the time the next one starts, the lack of riffing makes it sound more like a soundcheck through a fuzz pedal into an Orange amp. The guitars are a mix of distant doom tone and some cleaner bits that cut through and contrast a lot. It's really not pleasant, it sounds like they borrowed a doom band's gear and didn't know what to do with it or how to record it.

The drumming also bothers me - the kick can get lost in the guitars, the cymbals lost in the fuzz, but the snare cuts through like vintage Def Leppard. The sea of excessive reverb and effects helps the duo make plenty of noise, primarily with guitars, drums, and vocals, creating a soft wall of sound. The vocals are continuously drowning because of the processing. Unmemorable songwriting puts the focus on the production and atmosphere, which are really quite terrible. This allows awful elements to simultaneously stand out and be drowned out by layering and reverb of everything, which in itself is quite an abomination in this instance.

There is one memorable aspect of the songwriting, but it certainly isn't positive. They have a tendency to abruptly shift to piano and synth interludes. The solo vocal parts are even more exposed and unpleasant, because the layers of effects on them make them more abrasive than heavily autotuned pop vocals. If they couldn't manage a pleasant atmosphere with doomy guitars and amps, then the piano and vocals could not possibly be better. They are much worse.

It's a shame that making music that can be described by post-metal buzzwords doesn't make it good, because I can do math with words to make this album sound like it might be worth hearing. Post-metal by numbers. This is not a pleasant listen.

Dark Castle is a two piece sludgy doom metal band from St. Augustine, Florida. Fronted by Stevie Floyd on vocals, guitars and Rob Shaffer on drums and vocals. Dark Castle are well known throughout North America and Europe but are still a fairly recent band having been formed in 2005. Their new album Surrender To all Life Beyond Form is a new chapter in the Dark Castle legacy. They have definitely branched out a little more and made an album that is much thicker, much heavier, much more rich in density and a whole lot less straight forward. Armed with odd rhythms, melodies and a southern twist, this album is sure to poke the interest of any extreme metal fan.


The album starts off with the title track. This track sets you up with a synthesized intro followed by a quirky clean guitar melody and then just hammers in with full force. This track absolutely crushes you and makes you wonder what the fuck will come next. The album in my opinion ties in all together very well, it's like one huge song in a way. Because, there are basically no breaks in between song and they all share the same elements but still all stand out from eachtother. The whole album is to be listened to in one sitting, it's just that kind of album. So many things make this album unique. For example all the different chords, the combination of intrecate odd timed melodies mixed with crushing rhythms and a thick sludgy atmosphere.


This album clocks in at 33 minutes which honestly isn't very long for a doom metal rooted album, and honestly it doesn't need to be 1 hour long. The style Dark Castle play varied and heavy as hell. It would start getting drained of it's '' It factor. '' It's the perfect length for what it is. Throughout the whole album you hear that it's not really rooted in 70's psychedelic rock and classic heavy metal like more traditional doom metal bands (Yob and Middian). Dark Castle is more black and death influenced than your average doom metal band. They include these elements to have a great mix of complex, rhythmically unothordox melodies of death metal and the raw atmosphere and sheer power of black metal. Combined with their own southern sludgy slow heavy stench truly sonically pleasing in the most disgustingly heavy and beautiful way possible.


The highlights of this album are Stevie Floyd's voice and the atmosphere itself. She sounds like she is an evil witch trying casting a hypnosis spell on you and it works very well. I was lost in this album throughout the whole length and in my opinion will is a victory for 2011 metal music.

For fans of:
Yob
Wolves in the throne room
Middian
Alcest

The immediate question that presents itself when I listen to Dark Castle's latest album, "Surrender to All Life Beyond Form," is "What happened?".

On previous efforts such as the "Flight of the Pegasus" EP and their debut full-length, "Spirited Migration," Dark Castle showed a great deal of potential, especially for a band composed of only two musicians. Guitarist/Vocalist Stevie Floyd showed a knack for inventive guitar riffage, including the use of exotic Gypsy scales, and also displayed an impressive low scream for a female vocalist. Drummer Rob Shaffer perfectly complimented Floyd with his heavy-hitting drum work which masterfully filled in the rhythm end of the two-piece's sound. Although they possessed an ear for some psychedelic noise and instrumental experimentation, they never seemed to overdo it on either front, and produced two focused, strong records.

But now they have released this album. Although it is difficult to know where to begin, I believe the most important thing to note is the noise. It literally sounds like this album was recorded in an air hangar. There is a layer of "psychedelic," (and I use that term only because I feel it is what Dark Castle had in mind when they made this fatal misstep) noise washing over almost the entire album which is completely unnecessary and drowns out Floyd's vocals and guitars at almost all times. This is really quite a shame because the riffs still seem to be mostly intact on this record, one of the few reminders of the promise this band once showed.

However, it is perhaps a good thing that the vocals are often drowned out, because Floyd has changed her vocal stylings for the worse. Where she previously let loose a guttural death metal growl complete with stunning low grunts, she now uses a tortured higher pitched scream that sounds like a poor substitute for the snarl of Laura Pleasants of Kylesa. While her old growl breaks through now and again, there is far too much of this inferior shrieking for my taste, and what's more, the vocals are layered with so much reverb and echo throughout the album that most of the screaming becomes an unnecessarily noisy chaotic blur.

But let us pretend that the vocals were not terrible and that the producer of this album had spared us all the excess noise. This album still possesses a problem that ultimately determines why I for one will no longer be visiting it with any notable frequency: Dark Castle have become too pretentious for their own good.

Now I know that pretentiousness in metal is thrown around a great deal nowadays as a means of attacking artists who possess a degree of artistry or a touch of indie rock swagger. But believe me when I tell you that this album has crossed the threshold of good taste in terms of weirdness and experimentalism. Where previous efforts contained short artistic furloughs into fast-fingered acoustic guitar passages or eerie spoken-word numbers that hinted that Dark Castle was not your run-of-the-mill modern doom band, "Surrender to All Life Beyond Form" seems like it is formulaically attempting to be strange or (and I apologize in advance for resorting to calling it this) hip.

Instrumental track "Create An Impulse" is drawn-out and boring and features an uninspired composition that barely warranted inclusion on the album let alone two whole minutes. "Spirit Ritual" is three and a half minutes of Floyd moaning psychedelically over equally acid-soaked noise, which is only musically appealing if you've gotten yourself so baked that you can't get up to change the album. This track leads into "To Hide Is To Die," which is a forced spoken-word piece that woefully fails at copying the introspection and creepy atmosphere of "Spirited Migration's" "Grasping the Awe."

The entire album is rife with wonky guitar sounds that sound less trippy and interesting and more annoying, and almost every song begins with Floyd seemingly playing random notes while dicking around with her effects pedals. There is almost a sense of industrial metal trends going on, especially on certain tracks where the drums sound stale and electronic, in stark contrast to the full battering power that Shaffer gave them on previous outings. Think Rhode Island's The Body except less droning (and, as such, better, though not by much).

All of this culminates in the final track, "Learning to Unlearn," (which, by the way, is one of many awful artsy song titles that have plagued this band throughout its existence), which is a mess of piano, electronic noises, psychedelic buzz, droning vocals, and off-kilter drum beats that just sounds awful. It literally sounds like most of the parts of the song were recorded for separate cuts and were accidentally blended together into tuneless abomination that someone decided to hide at the end of the album in the hopes that no one would make it that far without turning it off and putting in the new Weedeater (a remedy I had to undertake after sitting through this entire album, and an effective one in case you find yourself in a similar position).

Overall, Dark Castle took two albums of thoughtful promising music and dumped it all in favor of a noisy, industrial, screechy affair that will likely alienate old fans and attract only the kind of people who attempt to put on Merzbow at parties before the rest of the crowd throw them forcefully out the front door and return to listening to something fun.