Published: November 9, 2020

This debut record from Victoria, British Colombia-based atmospheric black metal trio Liminal Shroud certainly delivers and deserves quite a few more adjectives than mere “atmospheric” status; In fact ‘Through the False Narrows’ achieves a crawling, tightly performed and intense bonding of post-metal, depressive black metal, and atmospheric black metal ideals without losing the plot to tunnel vision or indistinct movements. With this sort of trailing upward, looking downward craft the artist’s intent is everything and this is where Liminal Shroud achieve something special and evolved yet still raw around the edges. Inspired where mist, ocean, rolling shores and the green and grey of their meeting the band envision change (personal, spiritual, physical) in this natural ebb of shore into surf. It is music of dissolution and persistence, a wrestling mind creating something beautiful even if not entirely original.

Triumphant jogs and sorrowful melodic phrases leave me with the sensation of a flight-and-plunge towards devastation, long spun threads create this mood via guitar work that could touch upon (a certain era of) Primordial and Agalloch within the same piece and yet no two songs attempt too similar a feat. The melancholy of it is quite persistent yet it won’t feel like they’ve had you staring at the floor entirely too long. Look to depressive/atmospheric black metal for similar records and I’d say this one stands out for its impressive roadmap, the structure of the running order and the individual songs presents an epic (“A Hollow Visage”) to start, a peak of this language introduced (“The Grotto”) and a number of different tonal pieces before another epic (“Lucidity”) finishes things off in a satisfying way. The sub-genre that Liminal Shroud are touching upon here tends to achieve early substance that blusters into mundanity, rushed ideas and incomplete pieces, whereas ‘Through the False Narrows’ presents a complete (slightly rambling) statement from start to finish with effective visualization throughout. Satisfying melancholia I’d recommend.