I'd never heard C H R I S T before, but this evening I happened to be just in the mood to mostly appreciate their newest release, Tower. Their ambient, mostly-instrumental sound weaves through a variety of moods, and the mood gets quite dark on most of the songs. While not really a metal release, fans of slow or droning metal such as Earth would probably enjoy this one.

The album starts with Sine, a gentle, slow, and upbeat piece with ringing guitars and whistling feedback that makes itself known without ever shifting up to a scream. Towards the end of the piece, the lazy, slow drumming becomes more purposeful, like a heartbeat, and most of the melody dies away, though not the feedback, quieting down to allow a repetitious vocal sample in as the next track, Rope, comes on. The melody on this one becomes more solemn, glumly picking cold three-note riffs to hesitant background noise, and as the drums start up, the mood is dark and inexorable. Planar is quieter, more electronic-sounding, like a bad circuit with regular, mechanized drumming breaking in quickly to move to wordless vocals that are half sung, half chanted in a manner reminding me a bit of Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine, and certainly their sonic approach does have some things in common with Barrett-era Floyd every once in a while. We end the album with Ornement, which is in my opinion the weakest track on here. The others had some progression to them, but with an endlessly repeated riff played at the same speed as Sine, it seems like this one is both depressive and repetitive, reflecting a dark mood -- but not an interesting one, and with that one riff followed by a single note of feedback, I don't see why they couldn't have cut this track in half, or even by two-thirds, and gotten the same listener reaction without burning another six minutes.

Except for the last track, however, this one's quite good. Definitely not one to listen to on a noisy freeway, but good for a time (late night, for me) when one wants some complex, quiet, and introspective tunes.