Mount Eerie - Wind's Dark Poem (2009)

Just... wow. Folk musician Phil Elverum (The Microphones) takes his music in a new direction, with heavy noise, dark ambient, and black metal influences. Wind's Poem is, exactly as he stated, a colossal sounding album. Intro track Wind's Dark Poem starts off with some really heavy noise distortion, and his clean vocals ring clearly amidst the chaos of the song. The second track has a droning background synthesizer and is a much slower song, but still absolutely marvelous. My Heart is Not at Peace is reminiscent, to me, of darkwave/metal bands such as Dargaard, but with more lyrics (see Rise and Fall). The Hidden Stone returns to the heavily, fuzzy distortion we got a taste of on Wind's Dark Poem. Between Two Mysteries (my personal favorite track) has a different feel than the rest of the album, using South American, perhaps?, sounding drums or something with a simple synthesizer background quietly holding the melody as two separately recorded vocal tracks flow along together beautifully. Ancient Questions follows the same trend as the previous song, with the same percussion (glockenspiel, perhaps?) used again. It also has the same more upbeat, light feeling as Between Two Mysteries, while the rest of the album gives off a feeling of loneliness and darkness. Something returns to this heavy, non-penetrable distortion sound of darkness and loneliness, until the reverb heavy synthesizer kicks in and takes the song in a more ethereal feeling direction. Last track Stone's Ode is the perfect end to the journey this album will take you on; another lighter, somewhat slow song that sounds like hope and an escape from the dark sound that prevails on most of Wind's Poem. Simply a folk masterpiece, fusing genres that I never thought could be mixed well into one of my favorite albums of the year so far.