A Storm of Light have been a recent discovery who I'm still working on. Last year I went to two days of All Tomorrow's Parties' I'll Be Your Mirror weekend in Alexandra Palace. The first day was headlined by Slayer and I went with Hugh and Thom, and the second was Mogwai (with Mudhoney, Codeine and The Dirty Three) and I went with Sarah. Hugh and Thom met at my place in Surbition in the morning, we got some beers and a pizza for the train and headed into town for the gig.
ATP usually put a cinema on at their festivals and I've never been - the showings almost always clash with a band I want to see. The first band on that day were A Storm of Light, who I'd never heard of (at this point I'd not listened to Neurosis either), and the only other thing on was a screening of John Carpenter's classic They Live in the cinema. I'd not seen the movie, but was impressed by the description I'd read on the internet and really keen to see it. Hugh was adamant that I should watch A Storm of Light though and very pleased that the queue outside Alexandra Palace meant I'd miss the start of They Live but have just enough time to get a beer before A Storm of Light. As it happens, I ended up seeing They Live in the Prince Charles Cinema a few months later (loved it) and A Storm of Light again supporting Converge in November (so I would have seen both either way).
A lot of the music I write about on here isn't as heavy as this. I like (and need) a good dose of metal from time to time, but I wouldn't consider myself a metal fan, and any metal fan would agree that I'm not. The metal I do like tends to be more doom than thrash, and I do like my heavy bands to be slow too. A Storm of Light's apocalyptic doom is right up my street then, and I've been spinning this record quite frequently since I got it for Christmas. I've also recently bought their second album Forgive Us Our Trespasses (on cd) but I've not got into it as well as this record.
Half of the four songs here are covers - Day of the Lords by Joy Division (which always reminds me of Jesu) and Kitty Empire by Big Black. I didn't realise the latter was a Big Black cover for a while (despite having the original on Songs About Fucking) and thinking the first few times I played it that it reminded me of Shellac. Funny how the mind connects these vague memories of songs/bands. The two originals are great too, and the whole thing makes for a pretty bleak, dark twenty minutes. But if you're into that sort of thing it's pretty enjoyable too. I'd recommend them for anyone who needs a fix of doom.
Format: 12", die cut sleeve, cd-sized insert
Tracks: 4
Cost: free, new
Bought: gift
When: 25/12/12
Colour: White
Etching: none
mp3s: no
