The atmospheric school of black metal is rather good at dividing people. Its fans salute the way it takes the genre’s natural inclination to mesmeric repetition and evocative melodies and turns them up to 11. The black metal fans who don’t care for atmoblack deride its long winded and toothless nature. I count myself an atmoblack fan but at the same time, believe there are a lot of bands that prove the haters right. It’s a tough style to get right. That’s why the intro of Liminal Shroud‘s Visions of Collapse filled me with hope and fear at the same time.
When opening song “Nocturnal Phosphorence” built up to bleak tremolos and double bass abuse after a measured but intriguing two minutes of build up, I felt pretty good about Liminal Shroud‘s chance of pulling it off. It would be an excellent choice for a brooding walk on a stony shore, huddled in one’s coat against the merciless wind. That optimism started to pall towards the end of the nine minutes’ song time. There was a similar tale with “Nucleonic Blight”, which took about six of its ten minutes to sink its teeth into me. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying myself. It’s that I started enjoying myself so much more that I couldn’t help but look back judgmentally at the contrast. “Resolve” starts strong in an almost doom-esque fashion, and contains some fine epic trad elements about halfway in, but what happens in between is just fine. There’s no moment of Visions of Collapse that is bad on its own. The riff writing and musicianship deserves praise. I enjoy the frequent trad tinged moments that remind me of Primordial, and Drew Davidson’s drum work does an excellent job of propelling the music in an Agalloch-esque fashion.
The whole of Visions of Collapse frustrates me so much because there are some high class moments I wish I could talk up more. It saves its best for last with the chaotic fury of “The Carving Scythe” but even that feels too long. Liminal Shroud bring plenty of teeth to atmoblack but that bite gets lost in the slow build of their songs. It feels like Liminal Shroud have a killer album in them but when it comes to Visions of Collapse, they have divided my thoughts on the music all too well.
