REVIEWS

Soriah
Ofrendas de Luz a Los Muertos

Beta-lactam Ring Records

Posted: Tuesday, September 11, 2007
By: Matthew Johnson
Assistant Editor

Soriah's first CD was a spiritual blending of east and west, merging the majestic tones of a historic church organ with the Oregon performance artist's Tuvan-inspired throat-singing to create a sense of tranquility that transcended its seemingly disparate influences. This album doesn't do that. Instead of lofting you gently into the heavens, it'll drag you - perhaps kicking and screaming, perhaps resigned to your fate - deep into the underworld. And make no mistake: despite the grinning skull on the album cover, these spirits aren't the laughing dead of Mexican folk art. Judging by the hollow rattling of bone against bone, the distorted growls, and the slow squeal of abused electronics (provided by collaborator Lana Guerra of Power Circus fame), the dead are far more malevolent than the sugar skulls of autumn festivals would have you believe. Title track "Ofrendas de Luz a Los Muertos," translated to "Offerings of Light to the Dead," refers to the candles burned for deceased relatives on the Day of the Dead, but the sheer terror evoked by this 30-minute track suggests that such offerings are made not out of respect for the ancestors, but rather to placate them, to appease them, to convince them to stay in the ground for another year. Soriah's grumblings don't explicitly state what the dead might to do us if their realm were to intersect with ours, but the overall tone of the piece suggests it wouldn't be pretty. Second track "Esqueleto de Chapulín" is similarly chilling, with lots of dry skeletal rattles and hollow, droning whispers. Guerra's sonic manipulations aren't quite as violent or grating this time around, but vocals manipulated into a croak straight out of The Grudge keep things well on the eerie side of the spectrum. Still, the reward for making it through 40 minutes of unrelenting darkness is well worth it: roughly five minutes of Soriah doing some of his most glorious overtone singing, rising and falling in layers. It's so transcendently lovely that you'll almost forget the chill of the album's previous movements. Paired with everything that came before it though, it's a potent reminder that underneath every moment of beauty lies more death, bleakness, pain and sacrifice than most of us want to think about. A powerful message, and a magnificent album.