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The first entry in the new Crucial Blaze series of limited edition cdr/cd titles, which picks up where the now completed Crucial Bliss series ended. Now, our explorations into ambient drone, electronic noise and abstract heaviness descend into darker and more apocalyptic zones than before, and Robe's newest release Bleak combines all of these elements into an ideal flagship release for this new series. C-Blast customers may remember when I gushed over a stunning cassette that Robe. released on Thor's Rubber Hammer a while back; this new set of tracks continues in that intensely dark and oppressive vein, with seventy-five minutes of rumbling, creeping ambience and oozing, blackened bottom end raked with the blare of distant horns, smeared trumpets echoing across a vast ocean of black sludge, evil screeching violins time-stretched into endless drones, an immensely oppressive and threatening atmosphere drifting over formless glacial guitar/bass grind like plumes of pungent black smoke. It's like hearing corroded, distressed blasts of orchestral sound, broken and warped BM guitars and clanking machinery rotting beneath massive waves of low-end heaviness; the same reference points that I used for their Remains Of A Burning World apply equally here (Abruptum's Casus Luciferi, Neuntoter Der Plage, and Aderlating's most atmospheric moments), but leaning even more towards a sort of surrealistic industrial nightmare.
This limited-edition release of Bleak is packaged in a clear plastic library case with full color artwork, limited and hand-numbered out of 250 copies, and includes a set of two full color 1" buttons, a vinyl Robe. sticker, and an foldover insert, all carefully crafted and assembled.
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"...With Bleak, which eschews song titles for four lengthy self-titled segments, the Indiana musicians/filmmakers demonstrate the marriage between visual and auditory elements by composing creeping dread so convincing, it may induce panic in the listener. Their toolkit seems limited to effervescent static and twisting creaks built on groaning foundations, but listen too long and, like staring into a snowy TV, you’re bound to start imagining things in it. The third act is where the bad noise really starts to bare its claws, introducing fuzzy discordant melodies like funereal foghorns wafting into a rickety, haunted harbour...believably scores what might be taking shape in the shadows ’round bedtime..." - Rue Morgue Magazine
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ROBE. Bleak CDR