The archaic, “The Leaves of Life” starts our transportation into this paganistic plane, with Renner’s singing deep and chant-like while Vanflower’s voice haunts in the background, providing a twisted helix to a very old song. A modus operandi that is used to great effect throughout most of the tracks.
While the atmosphere of “The Leaves of Life” is almost certainly rooted within European folk sound, Vanflower and Renner’s own writing creates a much more American roots feel. “In The Garden of Ghostflowers”, being the first example that provides simple and sweet guitar work mixed with harmonious bittersweet lyrics that creates a cohesion of Americana folk and the sort of hallucinogenic lyrical content common in the works of the aforementioned bands.
“Edward” is perhaps the first stand-out track via a strong Mediterranean element within the musical composition (and choice of instruments used) that pulls together Renner’s and Vanflower’s own quirks and weaves them into a yielding and mesmerising track, full of depth and durability.
There’s something definitely Louisianan (or Mississippian respectively) in the guitar work on “How They Weep and Moan!” and while the track is only one minute and twenty-nine seconds long, it’s still enough to make you want to start eating Cajun chicken while performing voodoo rites!
“How Many Hours ‘Till the Spiders Work is done?” (a reference to Coil’s Plastic Spider Thing LP I’m sure…or maybe I’m just reading into titles too much), is another superbly strange track, with more world music sounds warped into a dark and brooding atmosphere (the atmosphere increased via Vanflower’s enchanting hums) creating the kind of audible space one would expect to hear within a iniquitous temple ceremony far from the beaten track.
“Wolf & Hare” (A name referenced heavily via the albums brilliant sketched art work) is perhaps the most experimental of the tracks, its’ surreal hallucinogenic repetitions and monotonous dictations closer to the kind of work NON produces than any of the more folk-based bands like Band of Pain, Of the Wand and The Moon (and the aforesaid groups). Regardless, “Wolf & Hare” has enough oddity about it to warrant further listening and contemplation.
While many bands have been mentioned here, Black Happy Day have mastered the art of identity at least, via producing an album that is both a homage to the genre it so closely follows as well as being perfectly unique product in its own right.
To put it as simply as possible, if you’re a fan of the genre, anything weird or idiosyncratic, taxidermy or getting up to no good in Necropolises then this is the album for you.
