Yrsel - Sacrifice

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Mike on Thu 15 Dec, 2011.

Do you like dark ambient droney type stuff? Well, you've come to the right place then, haven't you? This one here's got people from Ondo and The Austrasian Goat making ominous rumbles that sound like they should be on Utech. Weighty low- and mid-end drones that slowly melt into your subconscious and make you feel like you're a character in some bleak futuristic sci-fi movie and you're hiding out in an abandoned landfill site trying to figure out how to kill all the malfunctioning kill-bots before they destroy mankind forever. On the second side it gets a bit more melodic than the fairly flat first side, but this is still bleak and slow-moving stuff for people who want something dark to immerse themselves in when they're alone at home late at night with their thoughts and they need something suitably creepy and sinister. Expertly crafted feel-bad music.

* 100 only in Vellum-style sleeve with heavy PVC bag with illustrations by James McRay (Small Sacrifice, ONE LIFELESS EYE).

* The second release from YRSEL, the group consisting of the core of the musicians responsible for THE AUSTRASIAN GOAT and ONDO. 'Sacrifice' is a vinyl only offering and sees the line up expanded and the musical boundaries expanded. The massive tectonic drift of the 'Requiem..' CD is still here, though enhanced with further elements such as the inclusion of sampled voices such as on 'Exauguration', the track that fills Side A.

* Side B sees greater departures, with side opener 'Instinctual drive renunciation' being a warm and enveloping drone that gives way to the almost acoustic and rural feeling 'Totem phase'. The whole album is a conceptual meditaion on the notion of sacrfifice, as discussed on the back of the cover, and 'The rise of the scapegoat' is the final conflagration, massive rolling sheets of drone and slabs of noise colliding. The perfect end note for this epic album.