The one-man atmospheric black act Starer continues to impress with each new release by offering listeners an unbelievably profound listening experience. Starer’s third full-length album, “Wind, Breeze, or Breath,” is a thrilling exploration through grandiose atmospheric landscapes featuring some blistering black metal elements to create a fascinating sonic realm.
The album’s cinematic like presentation makes this a truly unique release where the music engulfs you with a plethora of sounds and emotions. Josh Hines, the mastermind behind Starer, is also involved in a variety of different projects and I’ve always felt that his approach to composing music is very dynamic. The guitar playing on this album is probably one of the strongest aspects of the entire album, and I like how he creates such simple yet monumental sounding riffs. Even though he does not baffle listeners with scale shredding lead parts, nor does he attempt to throw around whacky time signatures, the riffs on this album conjure up plenty of raw energy to add to the colossal sounding atmospheres.
This is definitely an album in which selecting a favorite track will be extremely difficult, because the music flows with a noticeably strong synergy. The first song on the album, “Drifting,” begins without any hesitation and feverishly jumps into a blizzard of aggressive black metal style riffs along with these epic sounding keyboard parts. Everything seems to be come at you all at once, although there are moments where the tempo slows down for a bit, but then suddenly picks up the pace to drag you right back into a distorted firestorm. After that first song I knew from the adrenaline pumping arrangements to the vivid sounding musical landscapes that the music was going to be moving into an even more grandiose sounding direction compared to previous releases. The album’s second track, “Crossing,” continues to hammer out more intense chord progressions and symphonic atmospheric elements. Also, Josh’s vocals are very impressive throughout the song as well as entire album. His harsh black metal vocal style really compliments the instrumental arrangements by emphasizing the album's unapologetic and raw emotional sound.
Atmospheric black metal acts like Starer definitely demonstrate certain characteristics that I think allows for the music to travel beyond the confines of what people think of extreme metal music. For example, the keyboard part during the intro to the song, “Witnessing,” caught my attention and I enjoyed how the notes created this spectral void like soundscape which reminded me of what you might hear from bands like Woods of Desolation and Earthshine. The balance of harsh black metal riffs and captivating atmospheric noises is something that I think makes this album very special, which I do believe can appeal to a wide range of music fans.
My overall thoughts about Starer’s new full-length album, “Wind, Breeze, or Breath,” should not come as a surprise given what I have already written throughout this review. Josh Hines is an impressive songwriter and composer who I think understands how to put together compelling sounding album. At the end of the day, Starer continues to get even better with each new release, and I can tell you that there is genuine passion and determination fueling each new recording from this act. I highly recommend this new album as well as past Starer releases, because the more people we get to listen to this music, the less likely society will become brainwashed by crappy artists like Maroon 5.
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