'Take Up My Bones' is a slow, mournful opus and its colours are nailed to the tree early through the intensely atmospheric tones of 'Burden Foretold'. Once the powerful, chanted vocals reach you for the first time you'll be hooked. "Fire high, a signal. Here's your sorrow, here's your curse". This style of vocal range is so difficult to pull off but as each syllable soars majestically skywards, your heart will flutter and your pulse will ignite with excitement. Add to that a blend of haunting guitar leads, funereal violin and organ tones and the solid, comforting rumble of expertly performed and written bass play, and you have a sound truly special. I'll harp on a little about the bass play if I may. I noticed it fully during the title track, and for me the application and performance of the bass guitar in music is an under-appreciated artform. On this album it's used sparingly, and it punctuates each passage sublimely whilst the deft grumble it produces can be felt running through my veins. It's a truly epic piece to the Ard puzzle.
I found 'Raise Then the Incorrupt Body' to be a more straight forward song compared to its predecessors. Here a mesh of acoustic guitar, piano and soothing guitar leads mix perfectly with Mr Deeks clean vocals. On this track he opens up with his full vocal range as the chants are minimalised in favour of clear, ambient singing. Slowly and surely this one rises to a more chant laden crescendo that once more culminates in a surge of adrenaline usually produced by fast flowing Black Metal, not crawling ambient doom. Yet so emotionally charged is this album, it seems to have the same effect. Instrumental track 'Boughs of Trees' has very much the same feel and I love the harmonic tremolo effect leading to crushing, poignant drums and then more guitar lead / violin created melody that washes over you in wave after wave of glorious sound.
A lot of bands like the listener to interpret the message within their work for themselves, and whilst I understand why, I still always find it frustrating as I am genuinely awful at interpreting lyrical concepts. Still, I'll give it a whirl. 'Take Up My Bones' has transported me back a thousand years or more primitive, arduous period of history in which the mere concept of survival for many is as good as life gets. So we have a simple populace who are then brought into contact with Christian pilgrims, and as time passes the word of God spreads and so this is the story of the spread and rise of Christianity in the North of England. However, in my opinion this album has a central character who is the catalyst for the spread and over the course of 'Take Up My Bones' his work, trials, tribulations and ultimately his death, are all laid bare within the albums journey. That's my take and I'm probably way off the mark. What I do know for an absolute certainty is that this album is beautiful, haunting, powerful, and mesmerising. I simply don't have the words to elegantly do this justice and so I shall simply let closing track 'Only Three Shall Know' have the final word...
"Sacred bones depart. Cover of night be yours. Clandestine, sacred fraud. Only three shall know"
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