Moon Coven Post “Further” Video; Slumber Wood out Now
Swedish haze rockers Moon Coven released their third album, Slumber Wood, last month through Ripple Music. The band’s first offering in some five years, it’s a 42-minute nodder of righteous proportion and density, led off by “Further” (premiered here) as an entry point into the broadened melody and shoring-up of aesthetic that’s taken place since Moon Coven offered the well-received-and-would-seem-to-be-reissue-fodder self-titled sophomore LP (review here) in 2016. In eight tracks here, they elicit riffage both familiar and nuanced, finding bounce in “Ceremony” no less worthy of its title than was “Further” in its demonstration of their progress, but neither cut completely summarizes what Moon Coven are up to across the whole span, be it the more atmospheric unfurling of “Gibeki Tape/Potbelly Hill” or the humming-organ interlude “A Tower of Silence” that follows the garage-doomed “Eye of the Night” and leads into the longest track “Bahgsu Nag,” the band seeing their way into a dead-on psychedelic dreamspace of interspliced guitar and intermittent push.
This is the first installment of a resounding closing trilogy given due ceremony by 
“A Tower of Silence” situated at the start of side B, with each cut functioning not only to bring something of its own to the proceedings — while emphasizing as well how much side A did the same — be it the tipping-balance-toward-ethereality of “Bahgsu Nag” or the manner in which echoing howls of the penultimate “Seagull” give way to mournful, downerist lumber at the finish, or how “My Melting Mind” doesn’t so much return to ground as plunder deeper (“further?”) into it initially while still leaving room in the second half to ring out a more drifting solo, never quite leaving the heft behind, but spreading outward from it ahead of the last chorus, which likewise highlights the subtlety of vocal layering that’s both been a melodic foundation and is surely to be a point of continued development for the band. Taken in its entirety, Slumber Wood offers breadth and depth of mix and a cohesive sound that’s unafraid to put its own stamp on what would otherwise be the hallmarks of genre. You can take it as hypnotic if you want, but it only justifies conscious attention when it’s given.
That said, the video below for “Further” is trippy as hell, so there you have it. If you want to think of it as a sampling of tone and general craft before you dive deeper into the record itself, go ahead. Whatever gets you there is only doing you a favor.
Have at it:
Moon Coven, “Further” official video
Up and coming Swedish psychedelic doom band MOON COVEN take you deeper into their dream realm, with their brand new “Further” video. Their third full-length ‘Slumber Wood’ is available right now on Ripple Music.
Bathed in a sublime pink aura, “Further” unfurls this dark, forlorn number with soaring vocals and deadly downtuned leads, as acid bubbles blossom around dreams of solitary walks through the cold, lonely woods. This new video is a perfect example of the occult energies MOON COVEN are able to deploy to mesmerize their audiences.
