In Depth Vattnet Viskar
Sky Swallower Review + Video

Sky Swallower fits into a strange place in Vattnet Viskar’s discography.  If all goes well, for a good number of people it will be their first introduction to the New Hampshire band, and they will find a polished, in-many-ways-slick black metal record with traces of post-rock that may or may not be to their liking.  For everyone like me who caught on with the group circa their self-titled 2012 EP (or earlier), it will come as a complete change: polished, forgoing almost everything raw and doom-y about their previous work, with growled vocals instead of shrieks, it frankly sounds like a very different band.

At this point in its career, as a virtual (though hyped) unknown, VV can essentially choose to do whatever it wants.  After all, this is a band that went from being local to signed by Century Media in the course of 6 months, at a time in their development when most groups are still figuring out how to play together.  So instead of providing us with a longer, larger version of what they’ve done previously, VV have taken a direct turn into Krallice-style proggy black metal, structuring the album as a post-hardcore composition, the whole thing of a piece.  It’s different.

In fact, they’ve ditched most of the cliché aspects of their (admittedly great) EP.  Sky Swallower opens barreling straight into the morass, crystalline tremolo lines standing out amid immediate barks and growls, no build or atmosphere required.  This is very far from the genre-required church bells, whispers and feedback of “Weakness” that became my first introduction to the band, and it makes reckoning VV a different task.  There is very little grime or dirt on these recordings; instead, the sound and title mirror one another, each celestially-reaching and huge.  Each instrument stands apart, clearly differentiated and defined.  There is little obfuscation going on here.

That clear mindedness translates to composition as well.  It works best as a single work, so none of Sky Swallower’s songs sound particularly good out of context.  “Fog of Apathy” simply stops at its midpoint, to be picked up by a hi-hat and bass combo that drags it somewhere different.  The penultimate “Apex” ends on two full minutes of nylon-string guitar strums, eventually joined by rolling toms.  And several short songs are interspersed between their longer counterpoints, forming clean interludes as well as what sound like they should be the climaxes of other songs, severed instead and recast as something else.

On their own, very few of these composing choices make sense, and picking at individual songs simply doesn’t work.  Because of this, I initially wasn’t impressed by VV’s new ideas.  But when all of the record’s 40-odd minutes are allowed to come together, something resembling logic emerges. There is an ebb-and-flow to the whole thing, the brief songs segueing and concluding ideas between longer pieces in a way that soothes and antagonizes the ear in equal measure.  The quiet comedown of “Apex” simply appears and dissipates with no resolution, no given reason for being.  It sounds better that way.

To my ears, Sky Swallower was clearly intended to be VV’s ‘crossover’ record, clean enough for the indie kids ensnared by the likes of Sunbather, weird enough for the long-hairs, with some snags thrown in for good measure.  I don’t know if it will necessarily accomplish this, but I also don’t think it matters.  It clearly introduces the band as their own entity, operating on a set of rules and expectations that are increasingly their own.  If they can keep this up, who knows?

DATES WITH INTRONAUT:

9/12 – Tempe, AZ @ Rocky Point

9/13 – Tucson, AZ @ The Rock

9/14 – Albequerque, NM @ Launchpad

9/15 – El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls

9/16 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada

9/18 – St. Louis, MO @ Firebird

9/19 – Louisville, KY @ Diamonds Pub

9/20 – Indianapolis, IN @ The Rock House

9/21 – Columbus, OH @ The Summit

9/22 – Rochester, NY @ Montage Music Hall