Pillar of Light to Release Debut Album Caldera Dec. 6
So, the way you make a caldera is you start with a volcano. Magma builds up deep under the surface in a magma chamber, molten rock all sloshing around and getting more and more compact. It would erupt, but the way is blocked, usually by dried lava from the last eruption making a thick plug. Maybe given enough time, it would melt its way through, but again, pressure building. What happens instead is an explosive eruption that completely empties out said magma chamber — ka-boom — essentially hollowing out the entire mountain of the volcano in quick order. A hollow mountain has nothing to support its peak, the peak of the just-erupted volcano, so what happens is the whole thing collapses, either becoming a lava lake or just a flat-ish bed of volcanic rock from which a new peak gradually, slowly rises over a long period of time, and that’s your caldera.
The presumed implication in Pillar of Light choosing Caldera as the title of their debut album is that they too have emptied their magma chamber as regards creativity and put everything they had into making the record. Plus volatility. Fair enough. The post-metallic five-piece — from Michigan, I think? I’ve only seen them listed as “US-based” thus far — have two singles streaming from Caldera right now, and certainly neither seems to be keeping a secret as regards their intentions toward combustibility. As you’d expect, the streaming player is at the bottom of this post. Transcending Obscurity has the release set for early December, and they sent the following down the PR wire:
US sludge/doom band PILLAR OF LIGHT announce debut full length via Transcending Obscurity
Pillar of Light’s debut full length is one of our most anticipated releases and we’re glad that it will come out before the year ends. Every year we’re fortunate to be able to put out at least one monolithic sludge record – it was WarCrab last year, 71TONMAN before that – and this year it will be Pillar of Light. It’s crushing, emotive, and has that rare burning intensity. Please check out a couple of tracks from this outstanding album AT THIS LINK: https://pillaroflight.bandcamp.com/album/caldera
Pillar of Light’s music is weighty and drenched in melancholy and amid all the pain and sorrow, they have found a way to project light and hope when all seems lost. It is the case with almost every single song on this profound album, where the songs toil and churn and build up for a divine epiphany of sorts to take place, culminating in a blinding, freeing, all-cleansing white-light catharsis. Without this ponderous struggle, the backbreaking sludge/doom drudgery, any of the uplifting parts would lose meaning.
As in life, both darkness and light have their place and one wouldn’t be the same without the other. The raw emotions in the music and the underlying plaintive melodies are all too palpable, and the feeling is heightened in large part due to the burning intensity and desperation in the vocals.
Pillar of Light have created an album that is poignant and more importantly relatable; it is soul-crushingly heavy, pinning down the mortal with the endless weight of struggle and torment and at the same time, invariably, ensuring that there’s enough humanity in it for one to see things through.
Track listing –
1. Wolf To Man
2. Leaving
3. Spared
4. Eden
5. Infernal Gaze
6. Unseeing
7. Certain End
Release date – December 6th, 2024
Artwork by Mariusz Lewandowski
Line up –
Aaron Whitfield – Vocals, Lyrics, Synths
Alex Kennedy – Guitars, Synths
Scott Christie – Guitars
James Obenour – Bass
Eric Scobie – Drums
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http://transcendingobscurity.bandcamp.com/
