Like Randy Quaid on a suicide mission into the alien mothership, “I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaack.” Receiving the Evcharist is our weekly feature where we pair choice albums with our favorite libations. Drink from the cup of heresy. This week’s offerings: Frøkedal and Sâver’s Split and Destihl Brewery’s Apple Pie.
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The Tunes: Frøkedal/Sâver – Split
This isn’t the first time that I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing a split EP from Sâver, for this column, no less, and it is truly a pleasure this time around to dive into another of their shorter, more eccentric releases. Here, the band collaborate with Norwegian singer/songwriter Frøkedal in a way that I absolutely adore bands doing: each artist takes a lesser known song from the other’s back catalogs and covers it in their own way. Anybody familiar with both of these artists should know that they wouldn’t exactly fit together on a tour package: Frøkedal is known for delicate acoustics, whisper-thin vocals and ethereal vibes, while Sâver are much more known for sludgey post-metal and experimental metal. However, both bands push themselves beyond the boundaries of their genre and into the spheres of the other: Sâver’s cover of “Shot-Put” dials back the volume and gain on their guitars and leans much more heavily into the synths that make up the backbone of their sound, carried by clean vocals and driving percussion under a blanket of brooding and swirling electronic elements. It is much more ambient and open, but it still retains the ominous mood and a sense of heaviness in the textures of the clean guitars that are quintessentially Sâver. Frøkedal, likewise, trades out the electronics and distortion of “I Vanish” for droning strings (I think maybe a nyckelharpa, but I’m not sure), strummed acoustics and layers of haunting vocals. In a way, this is an incredibly faithful rendition of the original piece, because it fills the sonic space the way that Sâver do. The drums still pound and drive the song, there is still a slow burning crescendo up to the very end, and the brooding sense of aggression is still very much present even as the edges soften a little. Overall, these two songs are incredibly interesting and show just how much each of these groups are capable of. It’s a shame there’s only two songs: I could easily listen to a full split album of this.
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The Booze: Destihl Brewing Company’s Apple Pie
Thanksgiving might be cold in the ground at this point (emphasis on the *cold* over here…) but there’s still a little bit of leftovers kicking around in our fridge, and one of those leftovers is this beer, another in the Normal, IL brewery’s wild sour series. This one is brewed with tart apples, cinnamon and lactose, along with the aforementioned wild yeast. It is not an overwhelmingly sour beer despite the tart apples and the sour yeast; don’t get me wrong, it’s sour, but it’s actually got quite a light body and delicate flavor to it. The lactose doesn’t make it cloyingly sweet, but adds a silkiness to the body. The opening is pretty heavy on the apple notes, but that mellows out gradually into cinnamon spice and a refreshingly clean finish. You get all the goodness of a hefty portion of dessert without the guilt or the bloat that follows…depending on how many of these you drink, I guess, but hey, it’s Friday: go nuts.
Feels good to get back into this. There’s plenty more to come, so cheers, and be good to each other.
– Ian
Nine Circles 