Spiral: Your Kindness Let A Monster In

The wonderfully dark and gothically titled Your Kindness Let A Monster In was the fifth album in the Spiral catalogue and by this time the band were really getting into what they wanted to be all about. An album that is dark, threatening and bleak in subject, is given the same air through its atmospheric music, YKLAMI proves that it is possible to create claustrophobic, overbearing music that truly gets under your skin, while keeping things relatively simple and self contained. There are no grand themes, no bombast and no need to use a myriad of samples or voices to make music that tells hard hitting stories very convincingly indeed.

Titles like "Father Will Make A Liar Of You" and "Your Kindness Let A Monster In" illustrate early on that Spiral are not exactly providing laugh fests, however the whole intention is to unnerve and keep the listener on guard, something the concoction of progressive, psychedelic, doom laden, ambient goth achieves throughout. Possibly too single minded and harsh in vision for some tastes that fall into the wide spectrum of genres this band roll into one amazingly suffocating sound, the production is nevertheless thick with atmosphere using echoing, almost spaced out of their mind vocals to illustrate the fear the characters in these stories feel. The electro hi-hat wash that runs through "Jenny Hurst..." is positively dizzying, while the repetitive spoken vocals during "The Man Who Never Left" really can be in the right (or wrong) circumstances really rather disturbing.

Impressive and lasting, Your Kindness Let A Monster In was the sickening, emotion shattering sound of Spiral doing what they do best and while there was better to come from the band, this is a fine release that still hits hard with every listen.

Track Listing
1. Sticks And Stones
2. Jenny Hurts Her Little Brother
3. Father Will Make A Liar Of You
4. The Man Who Never Left
5. Your Kindness Let A Monster In

Added: December 13th 2012
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Spiral at BandCamp
Hits: 1828
Language: english

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