As sick to death as I am of these post-rock/post-black/Post cereal acts popping up all over the place I tend to look at bands like Les Discrets with some causal admiration and wonder at how something so incredible can be produced with seeming ease. That said, lightning in a bottle is usually best left to conceptual interpretative than actual set goal, and this whole genre has already been raped and left bleeding in a corner; this marks the fastest decline in a fad or genre I’ve ever seen. Did it even last two years?

Tales of Wanderings by Old Silver Key is an album woefully crafted by a side project featuring members of Alcest and Drudkh, the latter being a personal interest of mine (and to whom I hold no future animosities after being made to sit through…this). I went into this thinking it would be another album in the already too-long list of bands jumping ship from black metal to the ‘post’ craze. To be honest, this album lulls me into a sleepy lethargy that doesn’t do much for me in the way of entertainment. When I think that I might, however briefly, find some deep-seated introspection in the music, which shamefully (and badly) rips off Anathema more than anything else, I’m left with pale imitation that taps into not one solitary part of my being. I am thoroughly bored with this record as it does nothing for me or my senses.

The vocals on the slower tracks are Danny Cavanaugh to a proverbial “T”, yet one imperative ingredient is absent from that delivery, and that is honest and provoking emotion. When these trite tracks emerge (that so badly want to recreate Judgment it’s sickening) I just sort of transcend out of my own head and long for any news on Cradle of Filth, which says a lot for me. The music in spots is so boring and blueprint, saying nothing for the strange, off kilter drumming in “Nineteen Winters Far Away From Home”, which, further, says nothing musically to encapsulate its title. To be perfectly honest, this album is just a basic flat line for me; I can’t find anything even remotely encompassing or elevating in it. I’m actually not sure if we should blame Anathema for setting the bar so high that these bands want to cash in on the style or the musicians who meander greedily into the fray, late and transparent as usual. This is more of a bad Top-40 attempt than ‘post’ anything in my eyes, but hey, what do I know? What I can offer is that the absolute stultification of my intelligence is not going unnoticed or un-avenged here. 

In the grand chasm that is rehashing of ideas and phoned-in musical inspiration this record is about as textbook as it gets. I don’t know if it’s more offensive that I wasted some 40-minutes of my life hearing this obviously soulless music or the fact that some otherwise great musicians would attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of its fan base and release such obviously mundane and poorly-executed music. Either way, I am left more disgusted than usual and just a tad angry that even in our wonderful medium of music the pretenders and opportunists are still rabid like Alaskan wolves starved for months on end.

TRACK LISTING

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*Comments:

1.  What Once Was and
     Will Never Happen Again
2.  November Nights Insomnia
3.  Cold Spring
4.  Nineteen Winters Far Away
     From Home
5.  Star Catcher
6.  Burnt Letters
7.  About Which an Old House
     Dreams

Total playing time:  37:23

Release Date: September 16, 2011
Label: Season of Mist

Old Silver Key - Tales of Wanderings

Reviewer: Chris

May 22, 2012