Review: Falls of Rauros – Patterns in Mythology
I’ve made it no secret to folks around the bowl that I’ll be moving to Maine soon to pursue colder, more open opportunities and to stalk Stephen King. In honor of relocating from one end of the country to the other, I jumped on the promo for the new Falls of Rauros album.
The (other) Portland group has always skirted around being something I’d be really into. They’ve got gorgeous, rich cleaner sections full of emotion mixed with awestruck black metal, and to my knowledge there’s never been anything up in the air about whether they might be Nazis. But something always fell short of clicking for me. I adore the opening track on Vigilance Perennial, and similarly, Patterns in Mythology has a lot of sections and bits I love. These dudes are solid musicians who really know their shit.
The brand of beautiful this record begins with is a louder, more sublime feeling than the muted quiet of their previous album. It then dives straight into the pounding black metal of “Weapons of Refusal.” The moments where the beauty stands above the harshness sneak in a lot more often on this record than what I’ve heard before, and stay just long enough to feel appreciated before walking out for a few moments again.
After the nice acoustic break of “Renouvellement,” “Last Empty Tradition” stands out in its triumphant gallop. A lot of the more beautiful moments for me came around in the second half of this record, and the way “Memory at Night” closes out the record is all but perfect.
I have some mixed feelings about this record. I love the hell out of a lot of moments here, and I’ll definitely be listening to Patterns again. But once I’ve gone through it I don’t feel the need to go back and listen to anything again too soon after. I’d recommend Patterns, quite highly, even. And I’m looking forward to seeing what these dudes do after, but it’s definitely been a much slower burn to get the full feel for what Falls of Rauros is doing, and an even slower burn to start appreciating it fully.
4/5 Toilets ov Hell
Patterns in Mythology is out now digitally as an independent release, or physically through Gilead Media
