Myopic & At the Graves Premiere “Through Veins of Shared Blood” Recording Session Video
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 15th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
The collaborative debut from Myopic and At the Graves, titled A Cold Sweat of Quiet Dread, is out March 12 through Grimoire Records. And look, I get it. Maybe you didn’t catch Myopic‘s 2018 self-titled LP when it also came out on Grimoire. Maybe you’ve never heard any of the material that the Baltimore-based Ben Price (also Foehammer, among others) has released under the solo moniker of At the Graves. If you want to be honest about it, I hadn’t either until the six-song/40-minute A Cold Sweat of Quiet Dread came my way with its roiling and extreme take on American black metal, doom and atmospheric sludge.
Breaking evenly into two three-track sides, the record begins with “Through Veins of Shared Blood,” for which you can see a recording session video premiering below. All I can do is suggest you watch that video, because it will give a sense of the process of these two parties — Price with the Washington D.C. of Sean Simmons (vocals and guitar), Nick Leonard (bass and vocals) and Michael Brown (drums) — coming together to create a work that represents both sides. “Through Veins of Shared Blood” is the shortest track on side A, but it still represents some of the tortured aspects of the vocals in its interweaving howls, growls and wails and the angularity of riff that underlies its more ferocious swells. On the record, “Gold Sinews” and “Reeling Between” follow and both top seven minutes but offer striking differences throughout as the former launches with blastbeats and clean vocals and screams in call and response form, conjuring a metal that feels ancient as much as forward-thinking, while “Reeling Between” offers an
Opeth-style melodic break in its midsection before renewing a massive, charred doom lurch in its final stretch. Oh and somehow it’s grunge too.
Side B mirrors the first three songs in structure: shorter track up first, two seven-plus-minute cuts thereafter. “Oppressive Ruminations” (4:04) is the briefest inclusion on A Cold Sweat of Quiet Dread and more definitive in its scorch, verses and choruses swapping in and out in a manner almost catchy in its own, punishing way. “Stray Parasite” veers toward Paradise Lost-esque doom in its second half, but the setup that gets there draws from progressive death and black metal in kind, and Myopic & At the Graves are never anyone more than what would seem to be themselves throughout. That triumph — and it is one, make no mistake — is somewhat ironically underscored in the brazenly melodic “Resonating Loss,” which likewise draws together metallic traditions extreme and not and forges a path of its own essentially by shaping them to its will. They end melodic, and that feels telling.
Of what? I don’t know. Hard to guess whether A Cold Sweat of Quiet Dread is a pandemic-born one-shot deal or if it’ll be an ongoing thing. I hope the latter, and I’m almost sorry to say it, but the three-piece-plus-one-two-outfits-collaborating thing? Yeah, you guys might just be a new four-piece band. Certainly throughout A Cold Sweat of Quiet Dread, the melding of the two sides is complete to such a degree — the album does not feel disjointed as it might with disparate parties saying, “okay now let’s do this” with some out-of-place change or progression — that to seek out a name for this unit beyond Myopic & At the Graves seems appropriate if they’re going to continue. Considering the scope and cohesion in these tracks, it’s a thread well worth pursuing.
So maybe you’ve heard these two bands before, maybe you haven’t. If not, this is something new anyway, so don’t feel intimidated or weirded out by the idea or the (very cool) anatomical freneticism of the album art. Just go in with an open mind and you’ll be fine.
Enjoy:
Myopic & At the Graves, “Through Veins of Shared Blood” recording session video premiere
Studio session video shot/edited by Ben Price for ‘Through Veins of Shared Blood’ by Myopic & At The Graves during the recording of ‘A Cold Sweat of Quiet Dread’ available March 12th, 2021 on Grimoire Records. Pre-order here: https://grimoirerecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-cold-sweat-of-quiet-dread
“A Cold Sweat of Quiet Dread” was recorded, mixed and mastered by Noel Mueller in the Summer of 2020. Additional engineering by Nick Leonard, Ben Price and Sean Simmons. Art by Austyn Sullivan.
MYOPIC:
Sean Simmons – vocals, guitar
Nick Leonard – bass, vocals
Michael Brown – drums
AT THE GRAVES:
Ben Price – guitars, vocals, drums
At the Graves on Thee Facebooks
