BLACKWATER HOLYLIGHT – “Silence/Motion” (2021)

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Riding Easy Records

Review by Warren Mayocchi

Consider the album title – “Silence/Motion” – watch the video for the title track. Here is a musical theme for a dissociative experience, the world and your own self move as you quietly observe the inanity of what unfolds.

The new Blackwater Holylight album opens with a track named “Delusional”. It is a ponderous descent reaching heavy tones with clean vocal lines echoed by death growls and bracketed with mourning.

What follows is a series of musical movements dwelling in this space and regularly taking a shoegaze style to let the songs grow into themselves. Second track on the album, “Who The Hell” almost allows drum and synth to take the lead as the band contemplate the moment. Third track is the title track “Silence/Motion”, which builds from a folkish start to a haunting climax.

The second act of the album, covering the remaining four songs of the album are perhaps the aftermath of the first three. “Falling Faster” begins with a light, jangly guitar, as if awakening, before the memory of what came before is remembered fully in “MDIII”. For “Around You” the band have created another music video, and it continues the story, perhaps travelling toward redemption in the presence of support. Finally “Every Corner” takes us on a psychedelic funky trip with a return of the background death growls to close out an epic production.

There is a definite heavy bass fuzz and doom commonality across songs, however there is more happening here which defies categorization into one box or another. This is an album to wrap your ears, close your eyes, and live in for a while. In another time and place each track capably exists within its own merits for a less focused mind.

Rating – 90/100

Tracklist

1. Delusional
2. Who The Hell
3. Silence/Motion
4. Falling Faster
5. MDIII
6. Around You
7. Every Corner

Line Up

• Allison “Sunny” Faris – Vocals, guitar, and bass
• Sarah McKenna – Synths,
• Mikayla Mayhew – Guitar & bass
• Eliese Dorsay – Drums

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