Vatican Shadow, "Remember Your Black Day"

I have become quite a devoted Vatican Shadow fan (with some reservations) over the last year or so, as Dominick Fernow's voluminous and oft-excellent string of limited cassettes has gradually become widely available through digital release and a couple of major compilations.  Somehow, though, he never got around to releasing an actual "official" full-length album until now (though I find this debatable).  Given that extremely long and slow build up, I fully expected Remember Your Black Day to be some sort of grand artistic statement or major creative evolution, which it mostly is not.  In some very minor ways, I suppose it might be, but it is essentially just another batch of new songs: some very good, some kind of forgettable.

Hospital Productions

As much as I enjoy this project, there are a number of aspects to it that I find baffling, exasperating, or unintentionally amusing.  Normally, that would pose a serious problem for me, but I generally like Vatican Shadow's music enough to shrug off things like Fernow performing in military fatigues; releasing a triple-album on red, white, and blue vinyl; releasing that same album in an edition of 911 copies; and then following that with an album that is explicitly 9/11-themed (this one).  I suspect that the reason I am so successful at disregarding Dominick's blunt, on-the-nose gestures and imagery is because they are usually in such sharp contrast to Vatican Shadow's actual music, which is frequently quite minimal, understated, ghostly, and ambiguously evocative.  In general, Vatican Shadow's sole real shortcoming is that Fernow's release schedule is more restless and prolific than is ideal, resulting in a whole slew of cassettes that have a few great songs each rather than any single release that is uniformly excellent.

I get the feeling that Dominick made a concerted effort to remedy that with Remember Your Black Day though, so I guess it is actually a landmark release in that sense: Fernow clearly put a lot of work into songcraft, sequencing, and production this time around.  He also broke some new ground stylistically, which is noteworthy as well, though Vatican Shadow has always been quite fluid stylistically.  Some of that new ground leaves me a bit cold, such as the incorporation of trebly black metal-influenced guitars in the heavy-handed "Enter Paradise" and the somewhat better "Jet Fumes Above the Reflecting Pool," but two of the album's clear highlights unexpectedly make magic out of thumping dancefloor beats (an innovation that did not work nearly as well with Prurient).

The first of those pieces is the title track, which unleashes a slowly evolving and punishingly insistent beat beneath an single endlessly repeating melodic fragment to somewhat mesmerizing effect.  Immediately afterward, however, is the album's absolute zenith: "Not the Son of Desert Storm, but the Child of Chechnya," which replicates its predecessor in far more viscerally crunching fashion.  I especially loved how it sounds like there is a live high-hat amidst the overwhelming and relentless percussive onslaught.  That was an inspired textural touch.

Aside from the brief album introduction, that leaves only three other songs, all of which stick to Vatican Shadow's historic comfort zone and most distinctive aesthetic: simple, eerie synth loops drifting above a cool beat.  All of them are fine examples of why I got into Vatican Shadow in the first place, but the most successful of the bunch is "Contractor Corpses Hung Over the Euphrates River," as  it escalates its brooding tension by deftly adding new elements to its beat.  "Tonight Saddam Walks Amidst Ruins" ultimately misses the mark slightly by incorporating a very straightforward minor key motif for its crescendo, but "Muscle Hijacker Tribal Affiliation" is another excellent piece once it progresses beyond its slow-burning build-up.

I initially thought this album was a bit of a disappointment, as I was truly expecting it to be a tour de force or spectacular culmination of some kind, but ultimately decided that that was my problem, not Vatican Shadow's.  More objectively, Remember Your Black Day is a slightly-more-ambitious-than-usual mixed success, boasting sharp production, a distinct arc, and one of Vatican Shadow's finest songs to date.  Also, it reaffirms my belief that Fernow is a very distinctive, nuanced, and thoughtful composer of haunting beatscapes, a talent that I never would have anticipated at all from his sprawling and generally very harsh pre-Vatican discography.  That said, this album does not feel any better or worse than most of Vatican Shadow's other releases: it is certainly likable and a bit longer than usual, but curious newcomers would be better served by checking out a multi-release compilation (Ornamented Walls or It Stands to Conceal) instead, as more is almost always better with Vatican Shadow.

• Muscle Hijacker Tribal Affiliations
• Contractor Corpses Hung Over the Euphrates River
• Not the Son of Desert Storm, But the Child of Chechnya