#isleptonthemoon

The decidedly emo quality of Isleptonthemoon’s band name has its complement in the sorta sappy strings that whine underneath Annos’ breathy clean vocals in the opening minutes of “It Never Gets Easier.” Depending on your tolerance for such sad boy antics, it never gets better. The song eventually sharpens and harshens up its tone, but it remains invested in the aesthetic value of big feels and bigger chords. Wounds of Recollection provides the split’s longest track, “Soon, This Will All Be a Beautiful Dream.” Annos claims a DSBM orientation for Wounds of Recollection, but the track has some of the prettiest riffage on the split.

For this reviewer, the Blood Mountain Black Metal Choir delivers the most passionate and engaging song, “Language.” There’s a Cascadian tone to the music, atmospheric and redolent of frost-crusted pines (are we still in Georgia?). When things get expansive around the song’s two-minute mark, the melodic gestures don’t drain the song’s negationist intensity. “Language” is not equal to the best moments on the “Folklore” demo the project issued earlier this year (see “3:19,” in particular), but it’s another move in the band’s attempt to graft the cold and abrasive qualities of black metal to Southern Appalachian cultural climes.

One can credit Annos with ambition. But the songs he creates under the Blood Mountain Black Metal Choir have depth and sustained heart. Among Annos’ various musical modalities, this reviewer wishes he’d brood longer on Blood Mountain and stay grounded on the Earth.