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CAINA  Mourner  CD   (Profound Lore)   13.98
Mourner IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Caina is another loner project that has been aligned with the artier, stranger fringes of black metal, and is overseen by atalented British multi-instrumentalist named Andrew Curtis-Brignell. The last Caina album on God Is Myth, Some People Fall, really surprised us when we first heard it last year, a debut that seemed to come out of nowhere yet blew us away with it's mixture of somber, buzzy black metal and abstract, 4AD records style dreampop. So now it's a year later and Curtis-Brignell has returned with Caina's Mourner, his first disc on the increasingly fantastic Profound Lore label, and it's somehow both sublimely beautiful and distinctly more abstract and avant garde than the earlier Caina material. Gorgeously creepy hand drawn artwork and gauzy grey textures cover the discs 4-panel gatefold sleeve, adorned with strange ghost-like faces and bird's skulls entwined with flowering vines. The songs flow together as one extended dream-hallucination, sometimes disjointed and horrific as blasts of heavily distorted low-fi black metal a la Xasthur bleeds across flanger effects spinning wildly out of control, or blossoming into majestic shimmering noise pop or passages of shadowy folk strum and the twang of mouth harp. One of Caina's great strengths is that Curtis-Brignell actually has a great voice, and he's able to paint several shades of gloom and dark, downcast visions by singing in a deep, bassy croon or rending his vocal cords with a demented blackened shriek that sets skin to crawling. Mourner also has some great lyrics, which point to the "unseen creaking world" that Bone Awl explores with their songs, and which feel even creepier and mysterious when their delivered through Caina's beautiful grey shoegaze. Completely amazing music, like Xasthur, Dead Raven Choir, Current 93, Swans, Sigur Ros, Lovecraft's prose, Xiu Xiu, and British avant-folk all swirled together into a surreal otherworldly dream. Highly recommended.