Tholos Gateway feat. Jarboe - Tholos Gateway [Gusstaff Records]

Set to be released via Poland's Gusstaff Records on September 17th, 2k21 is "Tholos Gateway", the self-titled album of the trio of the same name consisting of Colin Marston, Alex Reviriego and Vasco Trille which are bringing their most diverse backgrounds to the table for this project reaching from Black Metal to Contemporary Composition, Jazz, Ambient, Improv and way beyond. This eclectic melange leads to a seven track and roughly 44 minutes spanning album as complex and as far out there as their members individual history, starting with a brooding, most apocalyptic bass drone of doom in the opener "The Wine-Dark Sea" paving the way for a sparse, yet spine-tingling variation of Dark Ambient / Doom Jazz of sorts whereas "Nostos" provides an excellent blueprint for tense, minimalist piano noir arrangements and "Spell Of Circle", accompanied by the vocal visions of Jarboe, is comprised of unsettling tectonic low end shiftings, electrical crackles and chiming metal pieces alongside dramatic strings and a general atmosphere reminiscent of a now desolate battlefield with its soil still soaked in blood from last nights slaughter and slayage. Furthermore "Eternal Control Of The Gods" provides the first, even though stripped down to the bone, clue that Tholos Gateway do have a background in Black / Doom Metal, the "Hand Of Time" gets your brain with more slow moving low end movements, haunting atmospheres and tripping, polyrhythmic layers seemingly moving on different, yet sometimes interlocking time scales, the "Cyclopean Curse" lures one's brain - and soul! - into a trap with longing, siren'esque strings expressing the mourning sorrow of millenia-lasting isolation and loneliness whereas the concluding "Divine Spiritual Slaughter" harks back once again to the feel of essential desolation and a gaping, vantablack abyss buried deep within one's inner self. Probably the darkest album we've reviewed in 2k21 so far. True excellence.

Album artwork on Instagram!