VIT – The Dry Season
Review

Doom / black metal band Vit’s recent album The Dry Season is perhaps one of the genre’s most interesting releases this year. The Dry Season feels like an innately looming album; it has an aesthetic that is truly moving and winding without being obvious to the listener. One of the first aspects of the album worth discussing is the pacing of each track which leads the listener on an arcane journey through a desolate wasteland.

The first track “Sixteen Bodies” is a slow burn that showcases the band’s ability to not only play, but tantalize the listener with their doom-influence. The song is begins similar to a journey across wilted farmland, dry and hollow, that ultimately leads to a place of lawlessness. Following “Sixteen Bodies” is the fuller, richer track “The Dry Season.” I particularly liked the vocals and guitarwork on the track, as I felt both exuded a sense of dominance and anxiety that fit the theme well. However, the following track is perhaps the most indicative of the scope that Vit wished to convey on The Dry Season.

“A Hymn of Benediction” is a jarring, primordial example of both creative songwriting and absolutely pulverizing genre arrangement. The song doesn’t consign itself to wholly doom or black metal concepts, but rather absorbs aspects of folk and stoner-drone into it effortlessly. It’s rather reminiscent of their track on – entitled “The Ascension Ritual,” another long, snake-like track. During the final three minutes of the ten minute track it feels as if the listener is seemingly getting released from the bleak essence that Vit is conveying. This sort of abeyance to the listener, an almost coaxing of anticipation, is wonderful as it provides a smooth transit into the redemptive final track, “And the Rain That Soon Followed.”

“And the Rain That Soon Followed” feels like a pastoral hymn almost immediately. There is a sense of both absolution and vindication in the track as it posits Vit as a band that can convey more than just a sense of metal tropes being done well. It’s a satisfying end to The Dry Season, as it re-situates the listener from a place of desolate opaqueness to a place of almost certain hope and clarity. Toward the end of the track the upbeatness almost feels entirely in place with an almost Cormac McCarthy-like look into the Midwestern mindset. Between the vocal delivery of the album, the unrelenting music arrangements, and the interesting subject matter, The Dry Season is a brute album from start to finish.

Vit can be located on Facebook here. I heavily urge you to check them out.