REVIEWS

Tartarean Desire (www.tartareandesire.com/)

I'm into Japanese movies, the horror ones. They are classy pieces of artistic mind fucking and soul tearing monuments just because you don't see one drop of blood. They play tricks on your mind; they are the whispering wind in the darkness, what makes them a genuine psychological terror. Films like the Ringu trilogy or the couple of Ju-On films (The Grudge part I and II) and even Audition; they are all hints to a great beyond; unknown, vast and so very bleak, a vacuum which lies somewhere behind our eyelids…

'Ada' is very much like a Japanese movie, only caught on tape instead of celluloid. No, it is not your average 'doom album', and I'm not even sure it is doom metal despite its radical slowness – or any sub-sub-sub-genre of such to begin with – altogether. Nothing either romantic or ethereal or ambiance-generating is to be found therein; removed from any doom metal stereotype you can even think of, devoid of any cliché the genre is diseased with, 'Ada' is a phenomenon in itself.

Some would say 'Ada' is funeral doom. I would say Wraith of the ropes is all about mystery and terror and horror – the true, meaningful sense of the concept of horror: Fear of the unknown, fear from oneself, the sum of all human fears throughout time and maybe since its beginning. It indeed embodies the authentic origins of funeral-esque music, a requiem, it is indeed doom-inducing, but tagging it as merely being a funeral doom album would be, I think, a major understatement… Wraith of the ropes' 'Ada' is much more then that, and the reason is that it is such a personal and esoteric music that each and every listener will find something in it to call his own, a different color, a different face, for this music is multi-faceted and holds many demons within…

Weird, repetitive keys strike, mechanized beatings push the sounds, a humming buzzing guitar plays tricks in the background, trying to convince of its non-existence, and the vocals, oh the dreadful vocals, almost whispering distorted grunts, chanting, searing, cursing, crushing…

Listening to this album, one would have to only speculate about what makes 'Ada' such an exquisite piece. Allegedly, the music is rather simple, the instruments almost classic, the arrangements familiar, never the less there is another factor there… Where would you buy mystery, where could you possibly purchase talent and knowledge of the essence of what poisons the soul, of how to taint a soul, to crush it, devour and tear it apart? Where? Listen, learn and try comprehending this sublime entity called 'Ada'…

Wraith of the rope's debut album has been released by a young Israeli - Jerusalem-based - label called Totalrust records, run by a young man who has manifested through his label, the musical visions he adores, mainly the darkest expressions of the human soul through the art of music. 'Ada' is a fine example to the aforementioned.

It will tear your soul apart, and then some...

-Chaim Drishner