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What are Falls Of Rauros guided by on Vigilance Perennial? What is their core ethos here? If you want, you can hear a lot about how an act thinks of themselves in how they build their songs. Plenty of metal bands organize their music on the central question of “what would be the most rad thing to happen next?” Some switch out rad for brutal, or dramatic. Vigilance Perennial is guided by a different concept entirely, grace. Not only are the band’s movements from one motif to another as smooth as butter, each successive melody compounds the record’s overarching sense of beauty. Falls Of Rauros used to build their songs using repetition but here their songwriting reaches a natural flow from one idea to another.

From that core value, that each moment should be more graceful than the last, Falls Of Rauros gain access to a multitude of compositional choices that even their contemporaries in the folksy end of black metal can’t reach for. Calling what they do ‘pretty’ is too broad. Vigilance Perennial is tender. Not just in the soft moments, (although holy cow do the band kill it at those, I mean they practically sound like a lost Kinsella project during “White Granite”) but in the totality of their approach. There are neat subtleties that are legitimately subtle, not just fighting for space. Catch that chromatic jazzy bass move in “Labyrinth Unfolding Echoes”? Falls Of Rauros can manage those of kinds of moves, or the twinkling acoustic guitars during “Impermanence Streakt Through Marble”, because they aren’t trying to blow the roof off at every opportunity. They sound effortless. Graceful.

Stream Vigilance Perennial below. Follow Falls Of Rauros on Facebook

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