Eternal Jewel is the latest release from Public Guilt, the always-stellar Baltimore label run by our pal JR Fritsch. It is also the second album from Darsombra, the solo project o Brian Daniloski who had previously played in the Baltimore psych-noise-metal band Meatjack and can now be found handling live sound for just about every independant music venue in Baltimore. As I sit here and listen to "Auguries", the opening track from Eternal Jewel, it begins to dawn on me that a very subtle krautrock influence can be found in a large chunk of the Public Guilt catalog. I hadn't noticed it until now, but looking back at the past year or two in Public Guilt releases, I begin to see the shadows of 70's kosmiche music that stretch across the Deadverse Massive picture disc, Planet Y, and the Destructo Swarmbots releases that connects to the motorik urgency of Aluk Todolo and Psychic Paramount. Interesting. It's the vast cosmic strains of Darsombra's latest that caused this notion to rattle around my skull. Brian's previous album with Darsombra Ecdysis was great, a lumbering slab of black ambience and grinding metallic drone, but here he blasts straight into the heart of the void and immerses you in wondrous ethereal hum and ominous electronic pulses, pure deep space drift with cinematic electronics and Pink Floyd-esque guitar strings stretched and pulled into endless, eternal sheets of heavenly overtones. I'm amazed out how much this reminds me of classic space music like Ash Ra Tempel's New Age Of Earth and Tangerine Dream, but cloaked in a massive cathedral ambience. Dreamy and terminally hypnotic, but also dark and creepy, and as the album progresses, so too does it's resemblance to a horror movie score from the late 70's/early 80's - there is a vibe here that is very similiar to that of John Carpenter's early scores, and I'd be surprised if fans of Zombi and Goblin didn't groove on Eternal Jewel in a big way. The highlight of the album, the peak, is "Lamentings/Auguries", which begins as a buzzing dronescape but then evolves into a reprise of the opening track to awesome effect, the distorted guitar leads and distant doom drums obscured by increasing layers of noise and looped arpeggios and evil vocals. I love this album more and more every time I listen to it. This is awesome, beautifully bleak dark space music. Highly recommended. Fantastic packaging as always from Public Guilt, a black gatefold sleeve printed with letter-pressed metallic silver ink from the Stumptown press, with a booklet of artwork from Stephen Kasner.