-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Planning For Burial
ALBUM...: Below The House
GENRE...: Rock
STYLE...: Shoegaze, Sludge Metal, Experimental
STYLE...: Slowcore, Doomgaze, Drone Metal, Ambient
YEAR....: 2017
LABEL...: Flenser
COUNTRY.: USA
PLACE...: Mountain Top, PA
BORN....: Wilkes-Barre, PA
ENCODER.: FLAC 1.3.1 -8 -V
BITRATE.: 750 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / 2 channels
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 9
SIZE....: 239.35 MB
URL..: http://www.facebook.com/planningforburial
https://planningforburial.blogspot.com
https://planningforburial.bandcamp.com
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/planning-for-burial/below-the-house.p
https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/81905/Planning-for-Burial-Below-the-House
https://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2017/03/09/planning-for-burial-below-the-house
https://echoesanddust.com/2017/03/planning-for-burial-below-the-house
https://www.treblezine.com/34543-planning-for-burial-below-the-house-review
https://www.audiofemme.com/album-review-planning-for-burial-below-the-house
https://clrvynt.com/planning-for-burial-interview (Interview)
- TRACKLIST
1 Whiskey And Wine 4:10
2 Threadbare 4:46
3 Somewhere In The Evening 5:03
4 Warmth Of You 3:33
5 Past Lives 3:24
6 (Something) 2:30
7 Dull Knife Pt. I 5:00
8 Dull Knife Pt. II 11:41
9 Below The House 3:41
Total Playtime: 43:48
Planning For Burial, known for its universally personal lyrics and
melancholic, forlorn droning, is extraordinary in its ability to convey the
deepest thought with a guitar and effects; a solo effort, Thom Wasluck gives
the instrument a voice equal to his own. Atypical from previous releases,
Below The House veers from the gloom significantly on album opener "Whiskey
and Wine" and ventures further still on "Warmth of You," which is a veritable
pop song. With black metal screeches, subdued ambience and the ever-present
abysmal undertones, this is perhaps the most impressive Planning For Burial
release yet. Below The House is able to reach heights and depths previously
untouched by the Wasluck's own prolific catalogue.
*
This is a very strange case where I was decently upset this album didn't hit
at first on first listen, each song didn't feel as complete as I wanted it to
be and the album sonically didn't seem to stick to a certain sound or theme
throughout, but luckily, It wasn't the album, and I'm just stupid.
This is one of the few cases where maybe only 2-3 songs on the entire
tracklist i could listen to outside of the full album experience, cuz that's
what I truly feel is perfected here. Every song in the way it flows and goes
about works as an individual piece for this project, and despite some of the
genre and mood switchups throughout into something like ambient or even post
rock, everything feels cohesive in this gloomy dreary atmosphere that I feels
takes Doomgaze into a more grand scheme approach versus something like The
Angelic Process or Holy Fawn (which don't get me wrong still provide great
full album experiences). With Below The House it feels like every individual
song works and flows with each other to create a bigger picture that at only
43 minutes feels like it goes by way quicker. It's an incredibly well paced
project that really pulls me into the atmosphere from the beginning and has
become a regular album for me to return to. It hits in a similar way to how a
lot of other Doomgaze does, but to me is a unique experience that is just as
satisfying as other peaks in the genre for me.
*
Below The House opens with a squeal of feedback, a few light brushes across a
cymbal, and a sudden smack in the face, like some sort demonic plainsong. The
opening track to Planning For Burial's latest is one of the heaviest pieces
Thom Wasluck has churned out to date. A strange but powerful opening
statement on what is probably his most accessible and concise record.
The drums on "Whiskey & Wine" push the song forward with a nervous energy,
sounding as if they are not quite tied down to a metronome but rather to the
expulsion of anger and emotion from the person behind the kit. This does not
mean the recording is sloppy by any means; the waves of twisted guitars are
stacked atop one another with meticulous precision, pulling back and lashing
out at just the right moments. Dig deeper behind the noise and you will find
subtle flares of instrumentation that add just the right touch to each track,
whether it be the bells and keys in the opener or the slide-guitar on album
centerpiece "Dull Knife."
One of the most straightforward tracks on Below The House is "Warmth of You,"
a melodic, well-structured piece that is really one of very few Planning For
Burial "songs." It has what could even be understood as a chorus, a true
rarity across the project's discography. This is a trend throughout the first
half of the album; the songs are less about building on loops and bombarding
the listener with increasingly powerful waves of noise. Instead, they build
and collapse, flowing back and forth with more structure than before.
This structure doesn't stick around for long though, as "Warmth of You" is
followed by two eerie, synth-heavy soundscapes. These two tracks provide a
bit of a recollection before "Dull Knife," the near 17-minute centerpiece of
the record that is split into two parts. Within those 17 minutes you will
find examples of everything that Planning For Burial does best. Pt. I opens
with a pounding drumbeat and slide-guitar lead lines that push their way out
of the haze of distortion. It's a familiar sound at this point in the record,
but not an overdone one.
The aural assault lets up ever so gently as the track begins to decompose,
fading away into waves of ambient synths and echoing acoustic guitars to
usher in the beginning of Pt. II. The second half is a true burner, driven by
a hypnotic, pulsing kick-drum and chugging guitar. Here Wasluck's voice is
the driving force, repeating the line "call me back home" as he slowly pushes
the song forward, increasing tension as he goes. The crescendo builds and
builds until Wasluck lets out a shout of anguish in the distance, ushering in
the closing moments of "Dull Knife." It is a surprisingly gentle conclusion
to such a powerful piece.
With a few notable exceptions, Wasluck himself doesn't say much throughout
the record, and he doesn't really need to. Each song has a particular
emotional energy crafted by the haunting, melodic guitar lines. All Wasluck
has to do is float in and out as he sees fit. His compositions do all the
heavy lifting for him, allowing him to speak freely and say what he needs to.
On the record's closer he mumbles almost manically behind droning bass and
synth, layering his voice and repeating himself over and over to match the
slowly entrancing repetition of the instruments.
This hypnotic feeling is key to why Wasluck is so good at what he does. Even
though the songs on Below The House are more traditionally structured than
his previous works, they are consuming in the same way. Slow, entrancing
repetition paired with a complete emotional and sonic assault make Below The
House a powerful, unique record.
*
There isn't a glimmer of sun on Below the House, the latest from post-metal
outfit, Planning For Burial. Think of the gloom of a UV index of 0.
In this world, sunglasses are merely cosmetic.
The hints of cheerlessness should come as no surprise. Throughout the record,
I continually conjured up vivid images of a kind of pestilent wintertime
death that begins in the soil, born in the rush of cold, fetid air. Perhaps
the album title implies that there is a person being interred. Perhaps they
met with a violent fate.
Planning For Burial is the alter ego of Scranton, Pennsylvania artist Thom
Wasluck, a devilish creator who plays and records all instruments. Wasluck
has been prolific in the studio over these last couple of years, using
Bandcamp as a platform for spreading his peculiar brand of darkness to some
grassroots acclaim (it's curious to not that he has also distributed music
through cassette and floppy computer disk).
Sampling their catalog (which ranges back to 2005 with a debut album in 2009)
it feels clear that Below the House is a culmination for the band's early
work. Wasluck drags his listener through a swamp of gloomy shoegaze and
experimental metal, opening with a wash of gray guitars on "Whiskey & Wine" a
song that contorts painfully, adding a few touches of delicate piano over the
top for contrast. On "Warmth of You" Wasluck offers up his love of goth rock
in a vaguely danceable mid-tempo beat, vocals sung in what I can only refer
to as a "broken boy" vocal style. It's obvious in his construct that the
warmth he's singing about is a past tense. The pair of "Dull Knife" tracks,
which fill the second half of the record are outstanding, a grimy stick twist
into the gut with guitars that are unsettling and voices bellowed out from a
shallow grave.
It is wild to imagine that this depth comes out of one artist, the track
"Threadbare" using the menace of churning guitars and a stream of painfully
articulate piano. There is dynamism on this record that is unreal. Perhaps
most the interesting touch on Below the House is the variation in vocal
styles Wasluck employs (which gives the illusion of a bigger band) ranging
from a screeching wail to a hushed, almost confessional utterance that is
barely audible above the stormy mix of guitars and percussion.
For all the virtues that Below the House displays (and there are many) I end
up wanting just a bit more in the end. My want comes, I think, out of
reverence and because Wasluck pulled back the rock and offered such a
thorough glimpse into his bag of influences. I wonder where an entire record,
isolating one of these sounds would lead, say of his goth-metal inspirations.
Regardless, I am curious to see where Wasluck follows up. Whether he chooses
to shake off the shoegaze and go heavier, or he retreats further into his
skin, teasing the violence that this album so deftly articulates, I'm there.
*
Would you rather a musician be great live commanding all manner of powers
that conjure spirits and whisk the entire gathering to a place of other or of
temporary enlightenment, or would you rather that same musician be a paragon
of studio craft, wielding instruments like a paintbrush and the studio like a
canvas?
I was standing on the side of the stage at Saint Vitus in New York feeling
the embrace of wave after wave of sound hit me like a crushing tsunami as
Planning For Burial was finishing up the set of its record release, and a
question just happened to smack me upside the head while my eyes were shut
and a big goofy grin adorned my face that, at first, was going to remain
squarely in my noggin; the question was not dissimilar to the one that I just
asked you readers but had a bit more personal meaning for myself that has
stuck with me for days. Just how far and how long has this journey of echoed
sentiments and strange happenstance been, and is that journey coming to an
end or is one chapter closing and another opening; if time is a constant,
which I am not altogether certain that it is, what marker does Below The
House signify as far as the work of Mr. Wasluck and its relationship to his
growing cadre of fans?
Below The House continues to give me question after question while
experiencing the record in a myriad of forms (CDs, MP3s, the vinyl version)
as I continue to try to wrap my head around the sounds and melodies that
populate the record like the people that one imagines live under the roofs of
the houses on the cover sitting below the winter sky, but I keep arriving at
this notion that Wasluck has arrived at just the right cross section of the
first question, particularly sitting here while listening to the album and
reminiscing about the record release show performance that continues to tick
out in my mind as one of the most powerful performances of Planning For
Burial; Below The House may polish off some of the hard edge and noise but
also allows more room for the cool nuances and catchy as hell melodies, and
truly, the most hum-able moments occur in some of the noisiest movements (the
ending of "Dull Knife Pt. I" continually revisits its swirling oscillations
in my head).
Day in and day out many of us drift through the gray and gloomy days that dot
(or overwhelm) our days hoping for someone to start "Calling me back home",
and while the intention of the words and tones of "Dull Knife Pt. II" may not
be the powerful longing that I feel every god damn time the record hits the
section, it is one of the strongest emotions that have tugged at these old
and jaded heart strings in what seems like a lifetime and is usually reserved
for the sad remembrance of past loved ones and fallen heroes; those moody
elements inhabit the nooks and crannies of Below The House in various
elements from the melancholy opening movements of "Whiskey & Wine" (those
opening chords are crushing but when the swirling lead rushes in from the
ether... magic), and the gut punching crunch that kicks "Threadbare" into
gear sets the stage for Wasluck's vocals in all the right ways whereas the
vocals are similarly set up with a very different sounding "Somewhere In The
Evening", both of which display how the seeming disparate sounds build a
wonderful whole.
If Planning For Burial has progressed away from the pure intentions of the
artist to being experienced in any number of ways by the broad band of
listeners that brush wings with Below The House, perhaps Thom Wasluck's main
artistic vehicle has in some way arrived and is now no longer just his; maybe
this album is the marker that signifies just how an artist's work becomes
part of the fabric of a culture of people.
*
When I first saw the cover for Planning for Burial's new album, Below the
House, I immediately said, "That's Pennsylvania." There was probably a brief
spike in my blood pressure, maybe the beginnings of a fight-or-flight
reaction. I'm probably no different than anyone who grew up in a place where
they never felt they belonged and fled as soon as possible, but the muted
color palette and sense of gloom conveyed by that cover art is how most of my
childhood memories from Pennsylvania look. Thom Wasluck, the man behind
Planning for Burial, moved back to his childhood home to record Below the
House, and when asked in an interview at CLRVYNT what moving back to
Pennsylvania was like, he said, "Pretty awful. [Laughs]" You can read that
interview for more insight into what it was like moving back and recording
there, but given that "gloom" finds its way into most genre descriptions of
Planning for Burial's work, you'll quickly figure out where you are on the
emotional spectrum without the background story.
For our purposes, this is probably more of a metal-adjacent(tm) album review,
although it fits in well with The Flenser's catalog. There's harshness here,
and if you were to listen to the opener, "Whiskey and Wine," with its heavy,
Jesu-like undercurrent and black metal-like vocals, you might go in expecting
a more metal album than what you're actually going to get. Sure, the third
track, "Somewhere in the Evening" comes back in with that molten bottom end,
and there are some shrieks buried deep in the mix, but the clean vocals on
top make this feel like a conflict between listlessness and rage instead of a
full-on barn burner.
More than anything, this is often sparse, vulnerable music. "Threadbare"
accurately describes the music it contains. The vocals are clean, the music
is at times minimal and stark, although there's also a warmth to it, as hard
as it may be to pick out at times. There's a bit more fire to Below the House
than Planning for Burial's last album, Desideratum, but the heaviness comes
from mood, not volume. "Dull Knife, Part 1" might sound like heavier shoegaze
or slowcore, but "Part II" is a singular-minded, almost plodding tune that
builds so subtly that you might not even notice. The plaintive, repeated
line, "Call me back home / calling me back," is damn near heart-breaking,
even when additional guest voices join Wasluck.
I found this album difficult to listen to, but not because of rapid-fire time
changes or overwhelming dissonances. This music is difficult because it cuts
to your core if you let it in, and it taxes you emotionally. As I mentioned
up top, I think this album carries a little more weight for me because
Wasluck and I share Pennsylvania as the setting of perhaps not the most fun
times, but beauty can still come from that. As the only lyrics for "Dull
Knife, Part I" say, "This is the place I live / But it's not my home / This
is the place I live / My roots don't grow." Get into this gloom and let it
change you, and maybe even free you.
*
Thom Wasluck's work as Planning For Burial both adheres to many genre tropes,
while simultaneously shirking them by combining them and moulding them
together in such a way as to avoid being pigeonholed. Press releases in the
lead up to his third full length, Below The House, have variously described
his sound as metal, slowcore, shoegaze and seemed to have ultimately settled
on the term "gloomgaze." No matter the accuracy of these tags or not, the
suggestion is that Planning For Burial's sound is loud and cavernous, which
is true, but in listening to it you would never mistake it for the work of a
band; this is unmistakably the work of a sole mind. His work has always
enhanced the isolation at play for Wasluck, and Below The House takes that to
an even deeper level.
While Below The House does not mark a huge step away from the sounds of his
previous records, it does mark a step forward in terms of concept and
cohesion. In the lead up to recording this album, Wasluck returned to his
childhood home in freezing mountainous Pennsylvania and took up a menial day
job. This daily drudgery, surrounded by cold and numbed by alcohol every
evening, seeps out from the music into the album cover and title. The
roiling, tumbling guitars at play throughout Below The House illustrate the
rickety structures Wasluck's mind inhabits - his house and his body - and we
can feel the bones quaking right down to their foundations. Hints of the
outside world come through the twinkling pianos that underscore many of the
tracks, like lights on the horizon glinting in windowpanes, or the sounds of
powertools whirring outside, as heard on 'Somewhere In The Evening'.
Below The House features some of Planning For Burial's loudest moments to
date, most notably on opening track 'Whiskey And Wine', the one song in which
Wasluck opens up his throaty scream, as if the very genesis of the album came
from this alcohol-induced moment of catharsis. The album follows this path
set out by the opener, but while the guitars remain ready to bite and snarl
at a moment's notice, Wasluck himself seems to be gradually losing faith and
energy, leading to some more restrained moments. 'Warmth Of You' sails along
with the grace of an ocean-liner battering through a choppy sea, while
beneath the furor Wasluck is heard bemoaning his situation, repeating "I try
and I try and I try and I try."
Moments of utter desolation like this give way to moments of calm and
absence, where Wasluck seems to have become entirely numb and sapped of
willpower. This particular poignancy is most acute in the album's central
pairing of 'Past Lives' and '(something)' (the latter title perhaps meant as
a nod to Mount Eerie, with whom this album shares a certain epic, awestruck,
god-fearing spirit). On this double header, the volume takes a nosedive and
instead we're delivered a period of quietness built on tape loops, ambient
recordings, amorphous rumblings and gently mewling synthesizer. In these
moments you can picture Wasluck staring out into the sheets of white snow,
the solid white reflecting the blank cavern of his mind.
Wasluck unleashes his most ambitious achievement to date on the 2-part,
17-minute 'Dull Knife' suite on the latter half of the album. The first part
twangs and buzzes like a shoegaze song, but one that has been sliced open and
gutted by the titular 'Dull Knife', and had its viscera left hanging out,
very slowly decomposing in the bitter air. There's horror, but there's no
shortage of beauty if you adjust your perspective. 'Dull Knife, pt. II'
returns to a more serene sound, but does not let up the tension as Wasluck's
barely audible vocals hint at a mind on the edge of self-destruction.
Gradually his words become clearer as he repeats the phrase "call me back
home," wringing out the final word indicating the stress and pain that such a
journey has caused. For the only time on the album Wasluck is joined vocally
by a chorus of voices, like the souls in his hometown beckoning and gently
pleading for him to return to his frozen former stomping ground, immutable
despite his obvious reservations. The remainder of the song marches along
heavily, like a restless and weary traveler making his final labored steps
through deep and unforgiving snowdrifts, the wind clawing his face and
howling in his ears.
The album ends with the title track, 'Below The House'. This seems to go hand
in hand with Wasluck's moniker, Planning For Burial, as if he knows that
he'll never again escape the isolation and monotony of his enclosure, and is
destined to end up interred beneath the very place in which he was born,
lived and died. It's like the final embers of a dying fire, where our hero
knows that his end is nigh, but is desperate to maintain his burning passion
to his final breath, as he repeats "my love, my love," reaching out to
someone long gone and forgotten in the wreckage that was his existence. It's
a truly haunting and desolate way to wrap up Below The House, and perfectly
caps off what is a blazing and devilishly crafted album. This is a fully
realised project, enshrouded in frost and fury, and all of the passion will
seep into your psyche when you let it enfold you into its powerful gloom.
-=- SHGZ -=-
-=-=-==-=-=-
Shoegaze
is a genre of alternative rock that
originated in the late 80s. The genre is very
difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music
within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its
shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and
textural distortion that create
a tranquil, opaque
feeling.
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