Vyctoria
VAV
SCORE: 9 drones out of 10
The post-rock cliches that made Vyctoria sound like a Godspeed off-shoot are long gone; the quartet has taken one step further towards the ethereal, but the power of their furious attacks has also been magnified.
A few years ago, someone turned me into Vyctoria by saying “I think you’d really like these guys; I find them to be just ok”. Given that I already had some bad experiences with what that particular person considered “the best bands ever”, I figured that if he said they were just ok, that would mean that the band was fucking great. And so I navigated through the links shared on my Facebook and found myself really liking them.
The first album didn’t cause much of an impression on me, but I was happy to listen to something that was not another Tame Impala tribute act (yes, I know that’s my go-to musical insult), but their second album, 2017’s Ahora Veo Más Claro, really closed the deal, although I wished that some of the post-rockisms were a little bit more subtle, because it was hard not to think of late-period GY!BE, with the heavy guitars, trembling violin lines, tempestuous rhythm section and a love for crescendo-based climax. Still, there was something about their sonic explorations that hinted at something deeper.
We can finally say that the post-rock cliches that made Vyctoria sound like a Godspeed off-shoot are long gone, and although they still owe a good part of their sound to the Canadian nihilistic icons, it is no longer the one and only point of comparison. Since Ahora Veo Más Claro, Vyctoria started to incorporate more extreme musical exercises, as shown on the opener "Sacra Nomine", an epic song that was equal parts black metal, doom, ambient and drone; it felt like a collaboration between Wolves in the Throne Room, Stars of the Lid and Sleep. On this new release, the quartet takes one step further towards the ethereal and shapeless, but the power of their furious attacks intensified tenfold.
Vyctoria has opted to succumb to their dark impulses, tinting every piece with different shades of black, relying on noise-ridden drones to create devastating cataclysms. The result is total chaos, but is one that the band has learned to control. The way the cadence on songs like "Djinn" and "Abrahel" goes back and forth, exploding and retreating, feels as if Vyctoria has Cerberus on a leash and he has detected the presence of a newcomer at the gates. The language on these two tracks is mostly borrowed from drone and doom metal (“Abrahel” even has a slight nod to “Electric Funeral”); think of Boris’ collaboration with Sunn O))), but make it more visceral and raw.
The band has also parted ways with the melancholic nature that was ever present on their previous work. VAV begins with a violent burst, whereas Ahora Veo began with soothing textures. Even the calmer, incorporeal passages don't really evoke a complete sense of tranquility. "Timshell" merely teases with the idea of peacefulness until the violin erupts into anxious and erratic vibrations. A similar dynamic happens in “Disolver”, the beautiful closing piece, in which -once again- the violin disrupts the meditative state by incurring in slight atonalities.
The issues with the album have to do with its awkward flow as well as some production choices (the snare drum has a weird, almost gated reverb-ish sound, which diminishes its punch), more than with the songs themselves. VAV starts with two monstrous epics, and from there, it abruptly loses its pulse, suddenly becoming incorporeal. The abrupt change is far from feeling nuanced, it just seems as if the tracklist was put together by order of likeness instead of with the intention of creating a cohesive flow. The aim might have been contrast, but the album ends up feeling divided; one could almost get the impression that the first two songs belong to another album altogether.
More than a sign of evolution or growth, it feels as if Vyctoria is leaving behind their true self in order to comply with the free-form experimental aesthetics of Audition Records -the label in charge of releasing this album- since they’re pretty much a directory for everything disruptive and experimental in nature. From "Timshell" onwards, the focal point is texture and subtle timbral explorations, but as beautiful as the pieces are, they don't really resolve nor converge into anything. “Xompo” creates tension as it progresses, but it does not feel connected in any way to “Transformar”, even when they share a similar structure.
Fortunately, the transition from abrasive to serene, does not come off as forced or pretentious -after all, these are elements the band had been using already, just not to this extent- and it’s also not a matter of quality; it’s more about presentation. Perhaps opening and closing with the heavy cuts might have been too on the nose, but, undoubtedly, VAV would have benefited from a more nuanced flow.
Nonetheless, Vyctoria’s power and ambition are far too great to just be ignored; the intensity of the first two tracks leaves an everlasting impact that resonates throughout the rest of the album like a trail of smoke after a fire has been put out, and the calming -but unnerving- latter tracks blossom with lively textures. As abrupt as it is, that might have been the intention after all: to burn bright and go out like a dying star, leaving the stems from where new galaxies may form, quietly and gently.
