Aquilus is the one-man project of an Australian wizard named Horace “Waldorf” Rosenqvist, and Griseus is his one-hour, twenty-minute masterpiece — at least until he creates the next masterpiece.
I first learned of this album in April through a message from an NCS reader who calls himself FistForFun. And then I got another message from him in May, and another in August, and another in October. Though they grew increasingly strident, the content was essentially the same: Pull your head out of your ass and listen to this damn record! (I kid, FistForFun was more polite than that.)
It only took me seven months, but I’ve finally done that. There is a reason why the slow loris is the official mascot of NCS. Having now heard Griseus, I can understand FistForFun’s enthusiasm.
I think it’s fair to say that Griseus is unlike anything else we’ve ever reviewed at this site. It’s also unlike anything else I can remember ever hearing that could conceivably be classified as metal. The metal elements are scattered in the music — harsh vocals that are sometimes of the shrieking black metal variety and sometimes deep and howling; big booming riffs, heavy chugs, jabbing distorted chords; bouts of double-bass percussion; even a shrill electric guitar solo (in “Latent Thistle”).
But these elements appear infrequently, and even the harsh vocals are balanced by clean vocal harmonies and the sounds of choirs. Yet the vocals themselves are really only accents in what is primarily an instrumental album of neoclassical, folk-influenced orchestral music — one that’s endlessly interesting. Continue reading »