RAYS OF DARKNESS

Companion release to The Last Dawn, Rays of Darkness is really, at 35 minutes in length, almost an EP?though in 1960-70 time it qualifies as a full album. This album is by all admissions and intentions a much darker, more depressing album than its companion--and the first album in 15 years in which the band foregoes the employment of support from orchestral instruments (other than trumpet).

1. "Recoil, Ignite" (13:19) unfortunately for these ears, contains a very James Bond-like theme in the main melody of its first section (first seven minutes) which, at this pace and in this style, just doesn't work for me--though I do like the unusual touch of gently strummed acoustic guitar chords paired with the deep rolling bass notes. Tremolo guitar and drums dominate in the fifth and sixth minutes. Around 5:25 the theme gets reconfigured a bit: enough, for the middle section to make the experience somewhat better with strummed bass chords and plodding drums beneath Goto's tremolo. At 7:35 it gets heavy, full band, full release of tension and suspense, full tsunami. The "Bond theme" returns around 8:30. The heavier, more squealing angular eleventh and twelfth minute do more to distract me with thoughts of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" or "She's So Heavy" and other stuff. Revisitng this song a few years later I find that the "Bond theme" doesn't bother me nearly so much--it's a very beautiful melody line that the song is built over. Also, the diversity and inclusion of several "movements" makes the song so much more interesting than past A-B-A-B compositions. (26.5/30)

2. "Surrender" (7:41) suffers from identity issues?it never seems sure of who or what it is and/or where it wants to go. I love the presence of the trumpet/horns holding part of the harmonic weave, but, again, it just never seems to gel or congeal, never shifts into gear. (Maybe that is the point: dis-integration, distress and dis-function.) Disturbing and unsettling. Thanks, Jacob Valenzuela, for the first trumpet in the final two minutes?which stands sadly alone for a spell. (13/15)

3. "The Hand That Holds the Truth" (7:44) has become renowned for the presence of a vocal (Tetsu Fukagawa's death metal growls). The YouTube video of this is quite entertaining and enlightening as to the group's individual contributions as bassist/pianist Tamaki Kunishi-Yuasa dons an electric guitar to help produce the three-part weave that forms the second part of this three-part song (intro, weave-building, and climactic main explosion). (13/15)

4. "The Last Rays" (6:39) is an exercise in noise from distortion and atonal string plays. Again, if the theme of this album is the end of the world, then all of the compositions here make perfect sense. What surprises me is the dispassionate, detached feeling of the music?and this from a band that usually seems SO invested in the emotional impact of their songs! Maybe to them the end of the world is so matter-of-fact, such a foregone conclusion, that they have decided to present it like this as an exercise in detachment. I commend them for their efforts but have to admit that I much prefer the impassioned efforts of albums like ULVER's Shadows of the Sun or Nikitas Kissonas' Suiciety to represent a sad goodbye to human dominion over the planet. Interesting and powerful if downright scary. (8.75/10)

Total Time 35:00

B/four stars; a good album that is better intellectually?especially when considering the tough subject matter.