Band:	Oath Of Cranes
Album:	The Unsung Mantras
Style:	Dark ambient, Sludge doom metal, Atmospheric sludge metal
Release date:	April 21, 2023
A review by:	musclassia

01. Jivara (The Great Fever)
02. Rudra (The Superior Proposal)
03. Yama (Sacrifice Of Introspection)
04. Krodhana - Noone Will Ever Miss You [digital only]
05. Ahamkara (Who's That Ugly Face In The Mirror) [digital only]
06. Puja - Celebrate The Negation Of Hope
07. Tamas (Obfuscation Of The Third Eye) [digital only]
08. Maya, Pt. 1 - To Cultivate Your Illusions [digital only]
09. Maya, Pt. 2 - To Cultivate Your Disillusions [digital only]
10. Akasha - Everything Holy Is Profane
11. Kali (The Infinite Cycle Of Transformation)
12. Sannyasi Mantra (Elegy Of The Enlightened)

Some might consider it ambitious to release a 103-minute debut album; others might label it ‘excessive’. Ultimately, The Unsung Mantras is an album that I can sit through in a single sitting without losing my patience, but also one that may have still benefitted from some self-editing.

Oath Of Cranes is a new project formed by former Celtic Frost drummer Franco Sesa, also featuring Erol Unala, whose stint in the legendary Swiss extreme metal band overlapped with Sesa’s, amongst other musicians. The project’s name is inspired by Daoist legend, and their official website features an extensive explanation of Sesa’s inspiration, world views and thematic intentions for this new band. To this end, Sesa and company combine metal music (principally a sludgy doom sound, but it’s by no means tightly tethered to this one style) with instruments and sounds taken from Asia and ‘areas with shamanic cultural heritage’, including mantric chants and drones.

One thing that is pertinent to note is that the 103-minute digital version of debut album The Unsung Mantras is referred to as an extended edition on Bandcamp and other streaming services, featuring nearly 30 minutes of music cut from the physical 2LP version of the album. However, since these 5 songs were seemingly only cut for capacity reasons, one has to assume that the digital version is intended to represent the ‘definitive’ version of this album. The Unsung Mantras is not actually the first metal(-adjacent) debut album this decade with Eastern and ritualistic musical influences and ambient elements that exceeds the runtime limit of traditional physical formats; regulars on Metal Storm may remember the 128-minute colossal debut from Neptunian Maximalism, Éons, a record containing enthralling soundscapes that won over many listeners that attempted it. The Unsung Mantras is clearly more metallic than Éons, yet despite being notably shorter, I have a feeling it won’t resonate quite as successfully with users on this site.

In being a more metallic album, it is logically a less ambient record, and I would say that for large stretches of The Unsung Mantras, those drones, chants and non-metal instruments come into play only as background actors or in brief snippets. Outside of the opening couple of minutes of the record, the first track in which traditional music elements feel like they take a significant role is “Puja - Celebrate The Negation Of Hope”, which prominently features pipes, chants and tribal percussion. However, it’s not really until the subdued, spacious “Akasha - Everything Holy Is Profane” that metal withdraws from center stage, and it’s only really on the spiritual ambient “Kali (The Infinite Cycle Of Transformation)” that one can argue that the traditional music takes a leading role in the album’s musical synthesis.

“Kali” is then followed by the semi-ambient closer “Sannyasi Mantra (Elegy Of The Enlightened)”; I enjoy the droning throat singing and gradually evolving melodic clean guitar in this song’s first half, but it does mean that, aside from a brief metallic detour mid-song for a minute or two in “Sannyasi Mantra”, the album follows up an hour-plus of metal-dominated music with a closing third that is largely minimalist post-rock or ambient. I’ve encountered bands that have had this kind of album structure before (Spectral Lore in particular has been prone to it), and some (see: Schammasch) have made it work very well, but in general I do wonder whether it would make for a more complete experience if these contrasting dynamics were distributed more evenly across the album.

Looking into the metallic side of Oath Of Cranes, as mentioned earlier there is a sludgy doomy core to it; the predominantly long songs on the album are well suited to doom tempos, and the sludgy guitar tones and mixture of shouted, screamed and semi-clean vocals go well together. There’s also some post-metal dynamics on the album; opening song “Jivara (The Great Fever)” has some solid moody bass-driven passages in which the volume takes a back seat, while the more spacious “Yama (Sacrifice Of Introspection)” and “Tamas (Obfuscation Of The Third Eye)” give me some real Neurosis vibes. There’s also a slight stoner doom edge at times; passages in “Rudra (The Superior Proposal)” in particular remind me of some of the more ritualistic stoner doom bands, such as Om and Rama.

All the above is pretty solid, and when adding in the additional traditional music influences across these songs, the end result is consistently intriguing and quite frequently compelling. I will say that with 4 full listens now to The Unsung Mantras, I’ve rarely found myself bored or unmotivated to continue. At the same time, I’m not sure whether the album is quite strong enough to justify this runtime in the same way that Éons is; this is an album that I like, but with only a few exceptions (“Jivara” and “Puja” being chief among them), it’s not one I especially love. Funnily enough, if I were to suggest songs that could be cut to trim down the experience, I would find myself first looking at the digital-only songs, and “Krodhana - No One Will Ever Miss You” and “Ahamkara (Who’s That Ugly Face In The Mirror)” in particular. The former of these is the shortest song on the album, and represents a stark and unwelcome contrast in approach to pretty much the rest of The Unsung Mantras, opening with the kind of distorted, breathless vocals that one would expect on a late 90s alt/nu metal album, and consisting of an uninteresting stompy chug for its runtime. “Ahamkara” is less glaring in its unsuitability for the album, but it is quite a disjointed song that jumps from awkwardly stop-start chugging to somewhat tedious plodding with a slightly histrionic vocal performance accompanying its journey.

Excluding these two tracks, The Unsung Mantras is a bold and generally well-executed musical fusion that manages to back up its ambitious aims with fairly captivating compositions. For an album with a seemingly spiritual focus, it’s not as resonant as some of the greater lengthy releases with similar intentions (such as Éons and Schammasch’s Triangle), but it’s stil a very respectable effort.