SABAZIUS — The Descent of Man (review)

SABAZIUS — The Descent of Man album cover

Album · 2013 · Drone Metal

3/5 · 2013-03-24
renkls

The Longest Doom Song ever?

Previously I gave that honour to a very little known entity called Potmos Hetoimos for their 132 minute track "Dance With Divinity", but this drone doom track blows that completely out of the water.

With the ominous runtime of 676 minutes, this album consists of an extremely long form, immensely slow drone intro, which veers between pleasant and aggressively noisy and back again. It also contains musical elements more close knit to doom, bass, drums, guitar and all that - just in a very prolonged way. Taking all of 100 minutes to kick into the first real 'riff' of sorts, which is really just a sustained, albeit heavy chord, the song picks up pace thereafter, moving between drone and doom rather smoothly.

At around the six hour mark, there is a heavy doom segment that runs about half an hour. It is hard to explore this album in depth because there is simply so much to take in, most of it drone, some of it quite decently played doom; these sections however feel somewhat abstract, littered amongst what must be about eight hours of droning feedback in total.

I'm a sucker for feedback, I think it's a great aversion from typical musical expression, and essential to the drone genre, which is where the majority of this enormous track lies.

Interestingly, (or disappointingly depending on your view) the track doesn't really hit a climax, rather transverses a series of movements - some have lyrics too, surprising enough for a track that spends almost two hours warming up.

Of course, this entire affair ventures deep into the whole 'compare song lengths like penis size', of which it may trump; but the real question is, if it's any good?

The concept of length and heavy drone has been explored by no shortage of bands; perhaps my favourite in testing the limits of listener patience being Netherland's Bunkur. Here however, rather then being a consistent dirge of drone, there is enough variation for perhaps the most patient of metal fans to seek out. That said, should it be an 11 hour track? I don't think there's many bands that could make a conceptual epic track that long and have a story to tell within it that didn't lose its way majorly.

There's a lot of amazing doom tracks over an hour in length (Corrupted, Rorcal, Vonn and some of this bands earlier work does come to mind), which despite their outwardly long appearance, suits perfectly to the mood/concept it is trying to convey.

This is however, a long deviation from the basis behind this recording - an experiment. Initially intended to be a 24 hour piece, this track was more an endurance test challenge posed by Earache records then treated as an actual musical odyssey. As an experiment then, it's a fascinating, if no less then nigh inaccessible experience.

I think in conclusion, this album represents an even more elongated version of this review; rambling, sometimes incoherent, unresolving and longer then it needed to be. 3 stars.

Free to listen to on YouTube in Full.