INERRANT RAYS OF INFALLIBLE SUN (BLACKSHIP SHRINEBUILDER)

Coming out a while after Current 93's Black Ships Ate the Sky - an album which saw David Tibet take on a wider range of genres than the strange mix of dark industrial and weird folk he's usually known for - Inerrant Rays of Infallible Sun is a solid split EP with Om, an aptly chosen group of collaborators since the Current 93 piece on here feels like a momentary experiment with avant-doom metal - paving the way, in some respects, for the project's left turn into full- on psychedelic rock on Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain.

The Om cut, meanwhile, seems a bit faster and bouncier than their usual sombre, sacred fare - in fact, it feels a bit like an off-cut from their Sleep days. Which is no bad thing if you like yourself a bit of Sleep - and if you don't like experimentally-inclined stoner doom, you're probably not going to give this split a second look anyway.

This is a split single featuring the band Om on the A side and Current 93 on the B side. There were two different versions of this split single released, one for the US and one for Great Britain. Side A is a dark, stoner rock style track driven forward by a repeating bass riff and solid drums. The bass riff changes half way through the track for the second section, but the dark, fuzzy sound of the track remains throughout. The vocals are clean, but are drone-like as they are mostly sung as a single note melody that fluctuates a bit as it goes along. It's not too bad, probably not what you would expect to hear along with a Current 93 style sound, but there is not much in the way of prog here.

Where the Om track is the same on both versions of the single, the B side consists of the Current 93 track which apparently is different on the different versions that were issued. Tibet's vocals are a bit on the frantic side of his neo-folk style. The instrumentation hearkens back to some of Current 93's earlier albums, dark and a bit noisy with a lot of guitar noise. There is some musical tone to Tibet's chant/recitation style. The guitar motif changes very little as Tibet continues forward with his sing-song narration.

It's an interesting split which probably won't do much to win over fans of either band, and if there is some cross-interest from fans of one band or the other, it probably won't be for very long. Both styles are similar in topic, but not as similar in style, and the Current 93 track is not indicative of the music the project was producing at the time. This hard-to-find item probably isn't worth the trouble of looking for, but if you do run across it, it's still interesting enough to pick up more out of curiosity and novelty than anything else. Lovers of vocal drones and instrumental experimentation will love this though.