SKEPTICISM — Farmakon (review)

SKEPTICISM — Farmakon album cover Album · 2003 · Funeral Doom Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
Wilytank
With 'Farmakon', Skepticism take on a slightly cleaner sound that features a somewhat clearer tone of their dreamy weirdness. For whatever a reason, this clearer tone made this album a little harder to digest, but it turned out just fine. After all, it's Skepticism we're talking about. It's 2001 at this point, and the band's been at this for quite some time.

The organs on "The Raven and the Backward Funeral" kicks this off. Mostly, the pipe organs in Skepticism songs make it sound scarier, and at certain sections here they do; but they also make the song sound regal. The song is broken up by periods of calm acoustic guitar with drums in the background so that the song still has the necessary melancholic feel. These calmer guitars are present at the start of the next song, "Shred of Light, Pinch of Endless". However, at this point, the organs are replaced by the ambiance keyboards that Skepticism are also known for.

The atmosphere generated remains light sounding and natural as usual for Skepticism, as if the pictures they paint with the atmosphere involve rain. The mixture of calm guitar and keyboards give it the sad rainy day feel while the guitar again and the drums give it the natural feel.

So why does this album not get as good of a score as the two before it? Well, like I said, it's hard to take in even compared to Skepticism's other works. There's definitely more atmosphere and less funeral doom involved. Though I like the atmosphere, it can seem a little overbearing. Look at the so-called "untitled" track. For the first two or so minutes, it's just ambient. And even after that, the ambiance keyboards are really overbearing. I feel like they could have gotten a better result if they kept them more in the back like they did with their other songs from the past years. On the other hand, I don't really dislike it either. It's decent enough to prevent this album from falling bellow the 90 percentile, which is pretty good.

I do like the continuation of the delayed ending on the final song. On "Nothing", the keyboards get intense and loud (but they were like this on the climax on the last songs on the previous albums), then it ends. After a few minutes, the music starts again to play out a final segment before fading away.

In the end, 'Farmakon' is a win/win situation, but ultimately not as noteworthy as 'Stormcrowfleet' or 'Lead and Aether'. Oh well, it's still great for what it is, and I'm glad to see that Skepticism is still playing on.
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