Six Organs Of Admittance

A Star Guest Review by Ian

When bmags had asked me to review the latest installment by Six Organs of Admittance, I was not entirely sure how I would react to the bizarre psychedelic rock that Ben Chasney is so well known for.

The Sun Awakens is filled with an incredible sense of imagery, which all comes together to form a brilliant atmosphere in a story of the sun exploding and ending life as we know it. This album isn't as much about rocking out as it is about telling the story of life's pitiful demise. Chasney is trying to create a spooky album, and with titles like 'Bless Your Blood' and 'Torn by Wolves' how can we expect anything less?

The album starts off with an acoustic guitar as the front man with the slightest essence of percussion in a beautiful and melodious song entitled 'Torn by Wolves.' The track is just long enough, at just under 2 minutes, to give you a feel of the direction the album is heading. 'What direction?' you ask. Why, you will have to continue reading and listening to find out.

As the stand out track, clocking in at a whole 2 minutes and 57 seconds, 'The Desert is a Circle' seems far too short, and I wish it were about 2 minutes longer. The mix of electric and acoustic guitars lends itself with all of its beauty to this fun western style song. "Wolves Pups" is essentially a rewritten version of the first track, “Torn by Wolves,” that was created to bring back that feeling of neutrality, but half way through the song a noisy electric guitar drowns out the beauty of the acoustic guitar. This noise takes you in a substantially different direction towards a more eerie feel that comes out to you saying, "Can you hear it? This is the beginning of the end."

The first six tracks lead up to the long-winded centerpiece named "River of Transfiguration." This track is not your typical jam out; it is so soft and so quiet. So quiet in fact, that if you don't have your speakers turned up loud enough you will be missing the atmosphere that is being created by the light instruments. The highlight of the song is when they bring in droning monks adding to the atmosphere created by the use of what seems like an insurmountable number of instruments. This 24-minute jam session is about 15 minutes too long, sadly, and it can become very repetitive.

This album was a disappointment at first, but it must be understood that you are listening to a story. The atmosphere created from these well written tracks is nothing short of amazing. It is really too bad they did not make more beautiful and lengthy songs before they concluded it with one ridiculously long track. Now despite this 24-minute track at the end and a few other troubling elements, this album is great.

Rating: 3.5/5 or B-

(Ian is not a writer, nor much of a reader. But the dude is a hell of an uploader...major shoutout to him for helping resurrect the dead 45rpm - bmags)