Long Distance Calling – Eraser

 

 

Long Distance Calling – Eraser
EarMusic – 2022
Rock, Post, Prog, Metal, Instrumental
Rated: ****

Even though we’ve arrived at their eight studio album, for some weird and damn insane reason we’ve never gotten around to mentioning Long Distance Calling on Stoner HiVe before. But not mentioning Eraser, after that long interview with the honorable Diamond PR from The Same River, the amazing Empress In Decline album by Indian Handcrafts, which is about the same subject matter, would feel criminal and wrong. And since we can only support everything that shines a light on this subject, we had to mention Eraser by Long Distance Calling. For the subject matter of the new album is once again, the inexorable advancing destruction of mother earth by humankind. Nine tracks that bring a spotlight to some species fast becoming extinct on earth or to the decline of our world in general. The German quartet could have implored the use of vocals for this album to get that message across, but they still go the instrumental route and might therefor miss out on the easiest form of communication for a lot of humanity. Nonetheless, there are some compositions that obviously take cues from the animal it portrays. By for instance slow moving tempos for Sloth, and the death call performed by Jørgen Munkeby on saxophone and that guitar emphasizing the suffering and the sadness, it will turn every bit of positivity you might have had into the will to give up and to lie down besides the Sloth. 500 Years, the track before it, dedicated to the Greenland Shark, has the lowest tone of the album, the sluggish metal ending not only suggesting the powerful threat the massive beast might exhume, but also that is suffering from dread and threat itself. Cold to the touch, the extra strings might freeze your blood. Or your soul… Ending it all with the ninth, darkest track of the album, the title track Eraser, which seems to gnaw away at everything you feel, with its biting tempo and that gnarly tone. Long Distance Calling once again sheds a light on a world in decline; but where other albums seem to suggest there still might be light at the end of the tunnel, Eraser seems to say the tunnel is getting ever smaller and that tiny speck of light is about to disappear forever…

(Written by JK)

Homepage

Facebook

Instagram