The opening to Spheres’ “Forsaken Durge” tripped me up and made me look like an idiot. I thought I had his sound figured out: discordant piano, percussion developed from looping metallic scrapes and noisy bangs and crashes. After this purposefully dissonant intro though, Spheres’ latest released transformed into something much more sinister and much more satisfying. “Forsaken Dirge” plays around with many popular elements of slow, gloomed-out metal that has slowly been emerging from the forests. ‘Forsaken Soul’ is a pre-meditated field recording, and imitates the very best natural recordings as passage through space to the sight of an ancient, clandestine ritual. Gradually, over the remaining three tracks, instruments are methodically replaced and toyed with like Christmas morning. There is very little integration here, and maybe Spheres is saving that for later. Instead, each track has a relatively singular focus, such as on the ice-cold (and brief) ambient track ‘Maelstrom Descent’. On the albums final song, Spheres pools his limited resources to create an engaging but not quite so individual metal dirge that effectively sums up the entire release. Each of the five tracks is an engaging listen, but what really interests me is what Spheres could create with more time and more open spaces.
