The buzz on this, the second U.S. release from Rakoth,
is that it's going to divide fans and critics alike.
That's usually a shorthand way of saying, "It's so far
out, man, you can't even stand it." A flop. Maybe.
Like Pink Floyd's The Final Cut, Tiny Deaths ain't, as they say in my neighborhood, for everyone, but those who do manage to get into it are going to remain fiercely loyal to it. Whereas the band's previous release, Planeshift, fell well outside the parameters of normalcy, Tiny Deaths seems to be unaware of any parameters at all, existing far outside of convention (and even the norms of non-convention) and loving every minute of it.
The one troubling thing about the record is that you
can hear some of the songs crying out for larger,
grander arrangements,perhaps full orchestras but that
doesn't mean that the album doesn't work within its
current, uh, framework. It's an album that keeps
unfolding before the listener, revealing layers of
impenetrable mysteries that grow increasingly
fascinating with each repeated listen. Rakoth have
either gone out of their way (maybe by accident) to
create something that'll set people to talking about
what is music and what is pure experiment or they've
worked really hard at making a record that would get
them dropped from about half the record labels out
there.
Creepy, gloomy, out of this world, Tiny Deaths is a damn brave record from a damn brave band.
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