So this is the immediate follow-up to the debut album The Dissent Of Man for Vestiges, sharing a split record with Ghaust (whom I had never heard of until this slab of vinyl came up to be ordered), and I distinctly recall being rather excited to hear this record based on how much I enjoyed the debut from Vestiges; but somewhere along the lines I lost track of this split and in some respects completely forgot about its existence until only recently when discussing the band with some people.
Figuring that I would check out something new first, I popped the Ghaust side of the record on first and began waiting for something to happen as “Amongst The Ashes” came off like a long introduction song as the band deftly moved from moment to moment running through several different riff styles before stopping and starting again from what seemed like the beginning and then there was this awesome either keyboard part or e-bowed guitar that was really awesome; with this as my first experience with Ghaust I played the song again but found myself anxious for the last minute or so of the song again, and the second time I let their other contribution to the split play which only continued to flummox my ears as “Sleep and Release” had some really cool moments but still left me wanting their songs to go somewhere instead of being just another post rock band to lump into the genre (and while this may be an unfair assessment of the abilities of the people in Ghaust, there was just that one moment that really jumped out at me).
Sitting down with Vestiges was bound to be a different experience considering my familiarity with their work in the past, and “VI” certainly does not disappoint in the least, and in some ways this song feels more raw and unhinged than their previous work, but the powerful drumming is still there and the musical motifs are completely recognizable; the real difference lay in the guitar tones which at first stood out because of the mostly clean sounding guitar that was a bit jarring to hear (so much so, that I went back and listened to their full length just to see if I was nuts and imagining that this was a new sound or not and there is a definite change, maybe in the way this song was mixed but still a change nonetheless), but Vestiges still mixes a bunch of different styles into a mostly seamless performance that is powerful and uplifting sounding.
In any case, this is a cool split that shows two stylistically different bands putting forth what amounts to as least very solid efforts whether you want to hear the post rock of Ghaust or the heavy crushing crust cum black metal cum post metal cum some other lame genre name that Vestiges wields, and ultimately that is what makes this record a successful pairing.
