Since 2007 San Francisco-based occult Dark Ambient/Doom cult Common Eider, King Eider have been creating some of the most majestic and blood-chilling abstract doom ever put to tape. Sprinkled across a string of nearly impossible to find and hand-crafted cassettes, 7″s and a few 12″s, over the years, this band’s music has levitated from an abyss unknown, and has slowly crawled out of the depths of hades with the sole purpose to haunt, confuse and mesmerize human ears with the sheer force of sound and of total aural soul-desintgration. “Extinction” is the latest chapter in this band’s incredible voyage, and is yet another cornerstone in a growing discography by the band that is made of pure shadow and of complete sonic delirium – a masterfully constructed distillation of experimental doom metal, drone, noise and dark ambient.
The title track kicks off this new LP like a demonic clap of thunder, summoning thick black clouds of soot and ash that immediately cloak the skies, plunging the listener into a dispiriting and hopeless twilight zone. Slicing and swarming feedback and reverb-drenched guitars erect obsidian-black walls of chaos all around the listener, while demonic whispers, sparse tribal drums, and cascading cymbals paint an apocalyptic and drooping sonic picture devoid of all hope. With “Black Bough,” the aural twilight summoned by Common Eider, King Eider becomes both imminent and omnipotent. It’s like wandering the abyssal plains on the ocean floor at ten thousand feet of depth, where light has never shone, and never will. Strange pulses flicker and vanish in the distance while black flakes of ash slowly fall like snow from a far away and unreachable surface, all while unsettling and echoing chants accompany the listener through this absurd and lonely descent into the bowels of hell. You will hear echoes Heresy-period Lustmord resonate throughout this track, and the fiercest tradition of the blackest of black sound sculpting coming to full form here.
“Crystalline Shore” is the inevitable consequence of this slow and unstoppable descent into the depths of hell. If Gustave Dore’s Inferno etchings had a soundtrack, this would be it. Pillars of steam rise through the cracks in the earth illuminated by the faint pulse of lava, and revealing huge and massive caverns seemingly with no entrance nor escape, the furthest thing in existence from the safety and familiarity of the earth’s surface. With massive and twisting pillars of sound revealing a lost and far away world, this song just makes you feel like you’ve been devoured by the earth and you are locked away forever within its most remote depths, never to see the surface ever again. “A Wisp of Smoke, and Salem Burns” is the closing track of this stunning dark matter-spawned opera. It is the Charon that conducts you to the opposite side of the Styx. Swans from a wretched dimension, or GSY!BE funneled through the bowels of the underworld. A slow moving and imposing demon with eyes of embers who takes you by the hand on your final voyage, with the end of the track literally collapsing under the sheer tonnage of a huge doom outro steeped with massive guitar reverberations and crushing and thundering drums.
If you like shit like Sunn O))), Swans, GSY!BE, Thisquietarmy, Lustmord, Haxan Cloak, Mamiffer and Sutekh Hexen, then Common Eider, King Eider, will take you on an unforgettable voyage through the most remote corners of your mind and deep into the most hidden crevices of your soul, tunneling into you until your ego completely disintegrates. “Extinction” is available now through Cold Spring, and Sol Y Nieve (cassette tapes) and make sure you check their Euro tour dates below.
Common Eider, King Eider “Throats of Ash” EU Tour Dates with Gabriel Saloman – May/June 2016
27/05 (SE) @ Röset Festival, Småland Sweden
01/06 (FI) @ Telakka, Tampere Finland
03/06 (NO) @ Oslo library Norway
04/06 (NO) @ TBA, Stavenger Norway
05/06 (NO) @ Oddnose Festival, Oslo Norway
06/06 (SE) @ TBA, Jonköping Sweden
08/06 @ TBA Hamburg Germany
10/06 (DE) @ ACUD Berlin Germany
11/06 (CZ) @ Lechovický sklípek Praha, Prague CZ
12/06 (AT) @ A Berry Feast Vol 5, Rhiz Vienna AT
13/06 – (CZ) @ Rumiště, Brno CZ
14/06 (HR) , Zabok/Zagreb Green Room Croatia
15/06 @ TBA Maribor Slovenia
16/06 (AT) @ FUNKENFLUG MMXVI – sold out – private circle!, Abtenau AT
19/06 (IT) @ Freakout Club, Bologna IT
20/06 (IT) @ TBA, Rome IT
21/06 (IT) @ TBA, Turin IT
23/06 @ TBA Paris FR
24/06 @ Tapette Festival Camp’ene’ac FR
25/06 (UK) @ Café OTO, London
29/06 (NL) @ Het Bos, Antwerp Belgium
30/06 (BE) @ Sunbaked Snowcave Ghent Belgium
