Sealed In Blood - Streams of the Boundless Elements

Rating: 8.0

Country: Poland

Release Date: 2007

Track list:
01 - Streams Of The Boundless Elements
02 - Roads To The Unknown Dimensions
03 - Kiedy Wiatr w Oddali Wyje
04 - Przebudzenie z Lodowej Mizantropii
05 - Black Clouds
06 - The Ritual [mp3]
07 - Elebinie Bagien Przyglada Sie Moj Duch…
08 - Rdzawe Dlomienie Jaskin

Total playing time Over 67 mins

Band Website: Sealed In Blood

Sealed In Blood - Streams of the Boundless Elements

Funeral - Everything

Streams of the Boundless Elements is the debut album of the Polish dark ambient project Sealed in Blood. This is headed by Funeral whose other project Goat Thron I've already reviewed a while back [review] and this is pretty much the polar opposite of the Goat Thron concept. Where Goat Thron deals with the wretchedness of humanity and modern industrial society, Sealed in Blood tackles unfettered nature, the ancient past and astral realms, all unsullied by modern man. As such, Sealed in Blood is pretty much devoid of the jagged harshness of Goat Thron and goes for a lush, soft and ethereal atmosphere presented through slowly evolving semi-melodious synth-waves, sampeled folk and classical instruments like horns and bells and occasional background noises and percussion bringing to mind at various points Raison d'Être, Northaunt and later Ildjarn.

Even though there are only about two demos preceding this, Streams of the Boundless Elements already sounds very mature. Funeral knows when to sustain a mood and when to move to something new, so the mind gets expertly drawn into the atmosphere generated by this disc. There's also just enough melody present to create graspable motifs, but it's still nebulous enough to maintain the mood and not have completely identifiable song structures overwhelm and ruin the overall sound tapestry. It therefore reaches a great middle ground between familiarity and mystique.

While the sound quality doesn't have the high polish of your average Cold Meat Industries release, this is still high up there. This isn't amateurish bedroom casio ambient dabbling, with the synthetics and sampling being of a consistently high quality, having a full sound and rich multi-layered texture. Even the sporadic percussion doesn't come across as plastic, a rarity with bands starting out in this particular niche.

For those of you into dark ambient more oriented towards nature and bygone eras Sealed in Blood is an easy recommendation, having both the consistency of more established acts while also providing that sense of adventurousness that relatively new projects have. It also comes in a classy DVD-case, limited and hand-numbered to 100 copies, so hurry up and get in contact with Heerwegen Tod if this sounds up your alley.

June 10th, 2008