The Angelic Process - Weighing Souls With Sand FLAC

There will be a re-release on vinyl from Roadburn Records - http://www.roadburnrecords.com/2016/01/21/roadburn-recs-to-reissue-weight-souls-from-angelic-process-on-vinyl/

When most people hear the obnoxious generic designator “drone/doom,” they think Nadja. The only real monument in this sub-sub-subgenre, however, is this album. Funeral doom and black metal bands have tried time and time again to capture what it sounds like to be trapped in the pit of utmost despair, but no one ever succeeded like Kris Angylus. Tragically, Kris was way too familiar with this feeling and took his own life (the few biographical details I’ve read about the problems he struggled with are incredibly sad). Obviously, this was a huge loss for fans of genuinely creative underground music, because “Weighing Souls with Sand” is absolutely one of a kind.

What does the album sound like? You could name a number of possible influences—doom metal, dark drone experiments, shoegaze, etc. Perhaps the only influence that’s anywhere close to the sound of The Angelic Process is Michael Gira in his most transcendental moods (think “White Light from the Mouth of Infinity” and “The Great Annihilator”). Indeed, Kris talks about how much SWANS impacted his life in some of the few interviews he did. Even that only gets you so far, though. The basic elements of this album’s sound include incredibly fuzzy and blown out guitars, seas of hollow ambience, and minimal, nearly tribal drumming. You might think “oh yeah, I’ve heard that before,” but you haven’t. Just listen to “Dying in A-Minor,” which is easily the standout cut. It opens with layered synth tones that create the most otherworldly resonances; this is what it feels like to slip out of your body and plunge through an endless void. Then the drums hit hard, and the melodies emerge—some of the most tragic melodies I’ve ever heard. You get that sick dying animal feeling in your gut. Kris’s lyrics are often very difficult to understand—his voice is buried under a huge crashing magenta wave of sound. This is incredibly effective, as you can almost hear him being overwhelmed by the most powerful feelings human beings can experience. Despite the fact that Kris tended to use vocals as a textural element, he was a very powerful singer—his vocal performance is absolutely as chilling as other great tragic underground figures like Adrian Borland. “Burning in the Undertow of God” is another favorite. I’m pretty sure that the solo is performed in some weird way (in some of the pictures of Angelic Process performances, you can see Kris using what looks like a violin bow to play the guitar). In some respects the song is quite minimal, but in other respects it’s luxurious and nearly hallucinatory in its emotional intensity. The sound of the album is fairly monolithic, but that’s okay because it’s exploring nearly virgin sonic territory. The production isn’t the most professional you’ll ever hear (there’s so much clipping that I often wonder whether it was an intentional effect), but what does that matter to people who truly want to hear something different?

Real musical pioneers are individuals who “with half their hearts inhabit other worlds,” to use the phrase of a forgotten poet who succumbed to the same fate as Kris. Let’s not forget what a loss his death was to those of us still stuck in this world.