The number seven often holds special significance in western culture; a significance that goes beyond intra-number cannibalism. Artists have at times tried to transport this mystique to musical composition. As standard Western musical scales already hold seven individual notes, many artists seem to have tried their hand at incorporating the number seven into their rhythmic framework. The most famous example is likely Pink Floyd‘s “Money”, which turned a simple blues riff on its head by extending its length to an off-kilter, lopsided version of the blues tropes within. Primus have used the 7/4 beat extensively on 2017’s The Desaturating Seven, a concept album about an obscure children’s book, popular with counterculture. Many other examples exist, but few are from the realm of mainstream music.
Veilburner‘s newest album, The Duality of Decapitation and Wisdom is an album with a goal and a gimmick. The album’s esoteric concept is centered around the number seven, with each track being seven minutes in length and the album having seven tracks total. The significance of the number seven for the album beyond that is not always clear. Unlike a Primus performance, Duality is not chock full of 7/4 meters and in many ways, Veilburner continue the path they have mercilessly forged for themselves. Veilburner‘s avant-garde leanings have manifested mostly in the form of sonic expression. Unique production choices, timbres, and a clever use of effects pedals service songs that evolve slowly, turning basic ideas into sprawling, abstract epics. With all this still present, Veilburner push a bit further in some regards. The vocals in particular seem more off-kilter, more desperate, and more loose than before, showcasing a desperation that the Veilburner‘s last two releases did not have.
Yet, and I felt this with their last release, I can tell that Veilburner is slowly reaching the end of what they can personally explore within their sound, and their immensely tight release schedule does not help to mitigate this. At this point, I feel like I have heard most of the compositional and production-related ideas that Veilburner has to offer and they are just being re-assembled, a type of choose your own adventure puzzle where the elements can be arranged in any way and still lead to a pleasing result. And it is a pleasing result, admittedly. The issue here is that Veilburner used to be one of the few bands that would blow my mind and show my cynical reviewer brain things that it has not heard before complete with good songwriting. This is slowly eroding. To my knowledge, Duality is Veilburner‘s first album with a gimmick as clear as this. Notice how, despite opening the review on it, I have not spent much time on describing how it affects the album. This is because it largely doesn’t. Some songs have an ambient whoosh tacked on, or a rhythmic intro that gives Veilburner the flexibility to reach seven minutes exactly. And maybe the band trimmed some other sections in writing to make this happen, but Veilburner songs generally are in the six to eight-minute ballpark anyway, making the gimmick both unnoticeable and unnecessary. So commitment to seven and all, Veilburner has made a good album once again, but how much will be left if you start burning the veil on both ends?
