The debut album from A Storm Of Light (reviewed and listed here at C-Blast a few months ago) was terrific, a killer slab of oceanic-themed Neurosis influenced tribal sludge that delivered both crushing metallic weight and a moody, Swans-esque feel, which makes since seeing as how the band features members of both of those bands. Now we've got this new record from A Storm Of Light, and it's shared with our favorite dreamsludge duo Nadja, with both bands teaming up for a colossal slab of dreamy, industrial-tinged ambient dirge-metal massiveness.

The first side consists of two tracks from A Storm Of Light, titled "Brother" and "Sister". "Brother" starts off, a dark brooding dirge of swirling keyboards and pounding drums, alternating sections of expansive low-end drift, dubby martial snares and deep, crooning male vocals trading off against a dreamy female voice against the bombastic choruses where the band erupts from the brooding Swans-like tension into massive Neurosis/Isis style heaviness. Guitars grind and rumble, the male vocals explode into furious roaring, the drums switch from the glacial industrial pummel to rolling waves of thunderous crush, building into a symphonic dirge that moves in oceanic swells of volume and power. The end of the song drifts off on waves of buzzing cosmic drone, then lurches into "Sister", where the band changes into a more angular, shambling dirge. The vocals are more strained and sinister sounding on this one, and the guitars are matched by an equally heavy layer of howling synthesizers and somber minor key piano, with synths everywhere sparking off whooshing space effects and trippy effects. The heaviness peels back a few minutes in, exposing a lengthy passage of soft guitar playing, distant tribal drums pounding way off behind veils of smoke and fog, the male vocals sounding much like the singer from the Church all of a sudden, the female singer becoming much more prominent as their two voices entertwine, the grinding guitars and rumbling drones finally surging back up to the surface and washing over the song, finishing it out in a crushing, super heavy metallic dirge thats intensely epic and dramatic.

On their side, Nadja follow up with a single massive track called "I Make From Your Eyes The Sun". It begins as a soft, hushed haze of dolorous guitar chords, minimal percussion and muted feedback droning in the background, the drums soft and brushed as a gorgeous piano line slowly enters in surrounded by all kinds of ethereal drones and barely-percerptible chimes and streaks of backwards guitar. It's soft and beautiful and immensely dreamy, and slowly grows into a cloudburst of ultra distorted heaviness signaled by a booming drumroll a couple of minutes in. Less grinding and industrial sounding as some of Nadja's recent stuff, here the guitars are wrapped in glorious gauzy fuzz, thick and syrupy, melting over the minimal mechanical drums, Aidan's dreamy vocals blurred and warped by the swirling waves of fuzz and hiss. A glacial, noise-drenched pop melody is drowned in the dense distortion and caustic buzz, and it starts to sound like a massively distorted Slowdive, all shoegazey and swirled with strange flute-like fluttering, but still extremely heavy, particularly when the riff becomes darker and doomier in the middle, turning into an almost Godflesh-like mecha-groove grinding through the airy feedback and swirling clouds of buzz. Towards the end, this crushing metallic riff is absorbed into a thick soup of blissed out synth, the whole sound boiling down into a smeared expanse of deconstructed rhythms and fractured drum machine pummel, guitars blossoming into formless layers of glorious orchestral drone, until the song finally fades out in a haze of backwards melody and murky buzz.

The third side features the last two tracks, both of which are remix/collaborations between the two bands. The first one has Nadja taking the A Storm Of Light song "Brother" and mutating it into something much closer to Nadja's sound, muting the crushing metallic guitars and pounding tribal rhythms into a tidal surge of low-end rumble and oceanic swells of feedback. At first it's all soft and eerie, the looped guitars washed in reverb and echo, swirling synthesizers, smears of backwards percussion and melody appearing across the blurred expanse of drone, then suddenly an utterly monstrous sludge riff drops in with zero warning, the dirge-metal crush made even heavier by Nadja's layering of additional feedback and synths and oppressive night-sky ambience, the riff and lumbering drums wound into an infinite loop, everything distorted and bathed in effects, and eventually the drums fade off, leaving just the massive swirl of distorted riffage and rumbling feedback floating through space. And on the last track, A Storm Of Light does the reverse, taking the Nadja song and reshaping it into something very different from the original. The riffs and beats are taken apart and restructured into something darker and more electronic sounding, the vocals way up front and much more prominent, the riff barely recognizeable as it's blurred into a creepy ambient buzz, the drums cut up into fragmented beats, all very industrial sounding; when the drums drop out towards the end, it turns into a seriously dark piece of gothic ambience as vocals and looping synth melody and noisy, pneumatic sounds drift skyward, contorting into a weird psychedelic coda at the very end.

And then there is the fourth side, which doesn't have any music; instead, it's an eye-popping laser etching that features an amazingly detailed piece of artwork cut into the vinyl, one of the coolest etchings that I've seen. Both records are pressed on a dark, gorgeous colored vinyl (randomly selected), and the whole thing is presented with one of the coolest vinyl packages that I've seen lately, which is no surprise seeing as how this came out on Robotic Empire. The heavy gatefold jacket features amazing full color artwork depicting a bizarre arctic fantasy world of polar bears and snow owls and ancient crumbling monuments, all resting beneath a vast black sky filled with aurora borealis and distant galaxies, and inside there's a full color lyric insert as well as a CD version of the album that contains all of the music. Seriously recommended!