Kayo Dot - Epipsychidion

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"Death, whether in stealth or striking upon its bell, stalks us from the womb onward. The life of the ascetic and the life of the voluptuary are one life, and will dissolve with the drunkard and the saint", writes Jason Byron, whose words are a primary force of the creation of the musical universe charted by KAYO DOT mastermind Toby Driver.

The stark frailty of the human condition is the overall theme running through the veins of KAYO DOT's 10th regular studio album "Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike". In the sprawling, churning musical multiverse of mainly multi-instrumentalist Toby Driver's creation that has never accepted nor cared for any artificial borders of genre and incorporated for example rock, metal, classical music, goth, indie, pop, and jazzy structures, this avant-garde album appears to tilt towards a more harsh as well as heavy approach than on some of the previous recordings – and considering its dark and melancholic undertones may be given the epithet doom.

The human experience of a finite life probably gave birth to the linear monotheist concept of a universe that is created and expiring. The pagan mind often has a deeper looking cyclic vision as exemplified in Nordic myth, in which the world inevitably perishing in the fires of Ragnarok will be born renewed on the next day. Something of the latter's appears to have infected "Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike". This album has been recorded with the original line-up of Toby Driver's previous band MAUDLIN OF THE WELL. He also recorded the new tracks in the same location as the very first MAUDLIN OF THE WELL tape. In a way, KAYO DOT are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the release of the landmark double album "Bath/Leaving Your Body Map" and the 25 years since MAUDLIN OF THE WELL's inception with "Moss Covered the Swords and Plowshares Alike".

After the split of much loved MAUDLIN OF THE WELL, charismatic frontman Toby Driver formed the avant-garde music project KAYO DOT as a new outlet for his burgeoning creativity in 2003. The multi-instrumentalist and singer remains the only absolute constant in this band, although there are frequent lyrical contributions from his former band-mate Jason Byron throughout the extensive discography. In the following 18 years, KAYO DOT released an impressive number of full-lengths, EPs, splits, and live recordings that are all marked by considerable stylistic differences and a wide array of instrumentation that included guitars, bass, drums, vibraphone, violin, synthesizers, flutes, clarinets and saxophone.

With "Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike", KAYO DOT deliver another beautiful and essential facet of their complex musical multiverse, although the album can easily stand on its own as a most impressive piece of dark avant-garde metal.

"Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike" is available as 180g ash grey gatefold 2-vinyl, 180g black gatefold 2-vinyl, and on CD.

[alexandremalenfant]

This song is awesome. Probably my favourite of the new album!

[venahtmusic]

Lyrics:
[Α]

[I]

Why do we torture those we love
What shackles bind the loves of our lives
To the side of the burning glacier
Snow field flay the innocent corpse away
And born again dead with freezing dawn
Swirling shape, demonic shade
Vanished back into the void of lance-toothed god
Frost dragon eye waking and watching
Jealous with the jealousy of god
Bluer and paler than sixty undead moons
Shedding ingots lead cold and pointed

[II]

Frozen in timeless
Forever the end
Forever the steaming blood spilled
Splash on unforgiving ice and chilled
Into the dying shape of bleeding
Break this beautiful thing like glass
A scattering of snow from pines
Before the Age of Waste

[III]

The Ideal profanes the Actual
Kill it a thousand times and a thousand
And a thousand times more and still it comes
On crooked legs
To torment the living
With its loathsome auguries

[IV]

Goetic thing trace triangle in snow
It knows...
Curse of race is prophecy
See there is no end to perfection
Dungeon ice jail the Master in rime of endless winter

[Β]

[I]

Love burned his body but stole his heart away
Locked within an ebon box
Fixed by countless broken locks
Silence says what no one else could say
Upon the beach and upon the windswept shore
A gathering of sinners mourns
Immortal words that dying scorns
Off the coast of Madness
Not far from the daemon hollow Genius

[II]

Life is short, though death is very long
A drawn-out elegy to the saddest song
That was ever sung by the mindless earth
In silent tombs waiting and dreaming
Of growing and becoming and seeming
To swell with the bloated mask of Pride
But then to fall beneath the weight of suicide

[III]

Love is forever but you are not
Dusty amber on a dusty shelf
And its dusty ancient captive gazing out
The flower pressed between the pages
Of an antique book to remind us of our rages
Stoppered tears hoarded in a flask of crystal
Holy water, an ocean's worth of memories
Stoppered in a flask of black rock crystal

[IV]

Shut away are the ruins of our lives
In anguish on a couch of knives and dreams
Nothing remains but the memories of others
And the words and lines in the murmuring of stream