Husere Grav — You Are Transparent
Through 7 tracks Husere Grav takes us through a harrowing corridor of blackened, atmospheric guitar-based drone. There’s very much a continuity among the tracks, and while I wouldn’t consider You Are Transparent to be formulaic, there’s certainly some common threads that permeate each of the album’s 7 pieces. The commonality being a heavy emphasis on dense atmospherics and lots of low end rumbling.
The album begins with “Red Room,” a 13 minute exploration into a focused echo chamber of bone-chilling reverberations. Cold and menacing, this track establishes a pattern upon which most of the album follows. “Terrors” ups the ante, as Watson sucks his listener into a vortex of ghouls and ghosts, tugging at our limbs and infesting our ears. “Lines” sounds like heavy rumbling sound waves being channeled through a long metal pipe. It’s really dense and bassy. If you were to crank your speakers and bass all the way to maximum output, I’d reckon this track would shake your pictures and artwork right off the walls. “Found in the Woods” doesn’t stray too far from Watson’s conventions, but it does have a near element of melody poking through the thick, exhaust fume drone.
Surprisingly most of the tracks that make up You Are Transparent are relatively short in length (sans the epic Red Room), making it digestible to the uninitiated yet transfixing enough for those already acclimated to dark soundscapes.
While I can’t claim to be a huge aficionado of guitar drone, I found You Are Transparent to be an enjoyably dark listening session.