Cassette Review: Rivener "Fires in Repose" (Twin Lakes Records)

[$5 // Edition of 50 // https://rivener.bandcamp.com/album/fires-in-repose // https://twinlakesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fires-in-repose]

To say it is difficult to describe the music of Rivener would be an understatement and that isn't a bad thing because I do enjoy the fact that it is not something which you can compare easily to another artist, genre or blend of them.     Often times the music which is hardest to describe is the best or at the very least it adds that something extra to it when it is already that good.

The sounds of Rivener are loud, distorted static and cymbal crashes.    They seem to be mostly made by a guitar and drums in that sense, but not a drum machine and rather a live kit.    At first, it begins to have an almost metal sound to it where I think it could turn into something Liturgy or Today is the Day and that makes me want to think of tags of either post-metal or post-rock but luckily we hurry through that notion.

Throughout the distortion I am reminded of the band Bush but that isn't really a fair comparison- it's the only one that I can really come up with for whatever reason.   It has a slower pace to it at times but still could just as easily be something from the "Tank Girl" soundtrack and, yes, it does remind me in some ways of being in the desert as well.

As you can imagine the sound of distorted guitar notes and chords with drums coming through mostly with cymbal crashes, there are also drum rolls and pots and pans banging sounds.   It has a bit of a psychedelic quality to it and can become almost droning.   By the end of Side A there is a spoken word bit but it comes through in a way that sounds like a Transformer, which is to say that it's fairly distorted itself.

While I don't have an exact comparison for this in terms of another artist nor really a genre to put it in other than saying it's mostly instrumental, those are two things that really impress me about this because it seems like that guitar + drums combination could be done in so many ways which have already been done and the fact that this is just a sound that Rivener can call their own makes it that much more truly magnificent.