God Is Myth has been on an interesting trajectory. Early on, the label released some really cool albums from Caina, Sapthuran, Dead Raven Choir, and Procer Veneficus, all of which straddled the line between dark, gloomy folk music and buzzing, blown out black metal grimness. Lately though, God Is Myth label head Todd Paulson has been putting out some stuff that's much harder to pin down, like that rad Godheadscope disc that we had as our featured release a few weeks ago, and now with this debut from Dormant. Turns out that Todd himself is actually the force behind Dormant, which he formed following the dissolution of his previous one-man black metal/ambient project Uvall. Dormant is quite different than Uvall, though; although there's lots of black metal elements here, with layers of buzzing distorted guitars and Paulson's wicked blackened rasp crawling over churning double bass drumming and blackened buzzbomb dirges, he also adds all manner of droning synthesizers, violins, wind instruments, chimes, and jangly guitars drenched in chorus effects, turning a song like "I Am The Wind On The Horizon" from tortured black metal into radiant, slightly atonal indie-pop. On the other hand, "Sighs" and "The Creation Of Hell (Alli's Song)" have a melted, dissonant folk sound, that kinda creates an effect similiar to hearing a warped Dead Raven Choir record rolling on a broken turntable. Andrew Curtis-Brigenll from Caina shows up to contribute vocals and lyrics to the song "Black Ashes", and Tanner Anderson from forest-doomsters Celestiial plays hammered dulcimer on the title track, which is my fave of the bunch, an icy folk-metal dirge with huge distorted guitars and a hypnotic guitar figure marching off into the frost, really epic. There is a distinct pagan/heathen ideology behind the weird music on this disc, and Dormant taps into field recordings of natural sounds to create the wild, sylvan atmosphere that moves through the songs...by the album's end, we're left with a five minute stretch of nothing but the sound of a crackling fire and crickets at night. Beneath The Mighty Oak is pretty surreal, almost like a combination of Agalloch, The Cure, pagan folk, Angels Of Light, epic post-rock, and funeral doom blended together into a deeply personal vision of unspoiled wilderness and pagan mysticism. Gives me the same sort of vibe as when I first experienced the raw, unpolished imagination of Caina's Some People Fall. We've got the limited-to-200 edition version of this disc, which comes in a black digipack silkscreened in gold ink, and which holds a full color booklet insert.