It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged that there are certain words in the English language that, when used correctly, can make (almost) anything immediately more appealing. One of those words is celestial, which is hardly surprising given that J.R.R. Tolkien himself swore that when divorced from its all too pedestrian meaning, “cellar door” is one of the most pleasing strings of syllables in the entire language. Thus, if one takes a similar sounding word and adds in all the associations with stars and the heavens, it’s no great wonder that celestial has ended up being an inherently appealing word. Marry that to a genre that already tends towards the mystical, arcane and otherworldly, and you’ve got a genre descriptor that an awful of people will take one look at and be sold. All of which would be fine if Leonov were a band that could be straightforwardly described as “celestial doom”. Thing is, there’s nothing straightforward about it.
For starters, there’s entirely too much going on here to be doom proper, and – as the old jokes go – Leonov are entirely too ready to “just play the next note already” to be straight doom by most people’s standards. Rather, this is roughly where doom, post rock, shoegaze and dark folk meet, and the end result is quite something.
Photo Credit: Caroline Teinum Gilje
From the very first surprisingly catchy rumblings of ‘Samaritan’ (that sound uncannily like the more avant-garde end of Eurythmics), to the atmospheric dark folk sensibilities of ‘Bygg en menneskekropp’, which is essentially a very prettily arranged domestic with Norwegian folk singer Syvert Feed, to the subtle, resonant harmonies of the title track, there’s a lot to explore here. Not least because all four tracks are pretty much entirely different from one another. So unsurprisingly, there are an awful lot of words that could be used to describe each one, and the EP as a whole. Celestial and doom, yes, but also post, rock, dark, neo, folk, atmospheric, otherworldly, shoegazesque, esoteric and yet more. That said, it’s a simple enough formula for the most part; rich, textured vocals sit in the heart of a relatively sparse but constantly shifting sound, and when it all comes together it’s nothing short of hypnotic. According to Leonov’s vocalist Tåran, the band “envisioned the image of a holy woman in flames, peacefully smiling”, which fits with the sound they’ve concocted on this EP; ethereal musical flames dancing around a central female vocal that is the key to the whole thing. Apart from the obvious comparisons to Julie Christmas, and Leonov‘s own nods to Subrosa and King Woman, more recent parallels can be drawn with Kati Rán’s dark folk masterpiece of last year, SÁLA, and even Glazyhaze, who released the superb Sonic earlier this year. In all of these cases, as with Leonov, the voice is the thing. That’s not to say that it’s perfect: the lack of enunciation on ‘Bygg en menneskekropp’ does start to grate after a while, and there are other points where reining the vocals in would improve the overall effect, but for the most part the vocals are excellent.
The rest of it is also well done, and remarkably cohesive given how different each of the four tracks on this EP actually are, and this bodes well for Leonov’s upcoming full-length album. Shape of Ash may not be a straightforward doom EP, celestial or otherwise, but it is a strong one with a distinctive sound. It may not fit neatly into any one genre box, but it does fit rather nicely into the “keep an eye on these” box.