The Salt Pale Collective expresses again.
After releasing their first EP in 2022, Dave (guitar/bass/vocals/drums, The Sun Explodes), Alex (vocals/guitar, The Sun Explodes) and Dan (keyboards/sound design/samples/vocals) unveil A Body That Could Pass Through Stones And Trees, their debut album, in 2023.
The album gets off to a very slow start with Tria Prima, mixing eerie noisy sounds with a few faded vocals and choirs, then suddenly explodes into haunting tones accompanied by a saxophone that leads into The Great Work and its heavy saturation. Howlings perfectly melt into this oppressive landscape, but they are transformed into a gentle lyric as the rhythm settles, slowly moving forward and encountering a few strange touches before igniting again before The Metabaron takes over, naturally continuing in this atmospheric approach. The vocal parts are more distant, drowned out by effects and keyboards that eventually darken as we reach Exploding Triangles, which brings back extreme saturation. Clean and saturated vocals join forces before the sound softens once more, but the rhythmic pattern quickly strengthens, leaving the vocal duo to lead the way until Sermon Of The Edacious Revenant, where ambient noise easily feeds the slow, heavy riffs. The two voices take it in turns to punctuate the haunting tones, then the sound breaks up before gradually intensifying, letting A Body That Could Pass Through Stones And Trees with cybernetic vocals to carry our minds through the saturated wisps. The track is quite cinematic, allowing various samples to be grafted onto it as it progresses before dying in feedback, from which emerges The King Crowned In Red, the long final track and its heavy riffs where various voices, including a female one, lay down their poetry to accompany the fall to its final moments.
On A Body That Could Pass Through Stones And Trees, The Salt Pale Collective take a very ambient, cinematic approach to a strange, noisy and intriguing landscape. To get the most out of it, listen to it in one go.
80/100