Stemming from a mythological story of a horseman who hypnotizes onlookers with the slow, monotonous tempo of his horse's gallop,
Black Math Horseman's
Wyllt is a dark and stormy debut. As a barely classifiable combination of shoegaze and metal, numbing repetition is a big part of the album's detached charm, with the icy vocals of
Sera Timms melting and dripping over solid cobblestone doom rock foundations. The resulting listening experience is a nervy, threatening one, formed of expansive, dismal atmospheres spotted with the occasional savage outburst. Recorded as organically as possible by
Scott Reeder (
Kyuss,
Goatsnake,
the Obsessed) with minimal overdubbing, the songs give way to one another with no particular distinction in clouds of reverb, articulated by sub-sonic bass, Neanderthal drumming, and crawling waves of razor-sharp distortion. After five songs straight of rumbling build-ups and releases to ominous pastures, on the 11-minute spanning "Bird of All Faiths and None/Bell from Madrone" the sleeping dragon is finally startled awake to wreck fiery havoc in a roaring, thrashing finale that's equally scary and sublime.