Band:	Ode And Elegy
Album:	Ode And Elegy
Style:	Chamber, Post-hardcore, Post-metal
Release date:	February 2022

01. Ode And Elegy

An ode is a poem that praises and venerates. An elegy is a poem that mourns and laments. An Ode And Elegy is one of 2022’s most ambitious genre fusions.

When I first laid eyes upon Ode And Elegy, it was tagged as ‘chamber music, post-metal’; now tell me that’s not an intriguing sell before you’ve even heard a note from them. There is some precedent for mixing chamber music with heavier styles; Iamthemorning have acquired a decent following with their rock-influenced piano chamber music, while Fucked Up included it as but one element amongst many in the cacophony of last year’s monumental Year Of The Horse. However, one name that might come to certain minds is The Pax Cecilia, who took a different approach to the idea of ‘symphonic rock’ by placing string quartets alongside post-hardcore and prog rock. The Pax Cecilia only released two albums in the mid-2000s, but Ode And Elegy is a spiritual successor of sorts helmed by The Pax Cecilia’s Kent Fairman Wilson.

The credits for Ode and Elegy list Wilson and ex-The Pax Cecilia collaborator Harold Taddy as unspecified contributors, as well as a bassist, two drummers (one of which is another The Pax Cecilia alumnus, Greg Austin), a harpist, a flautist, a string quartet, an orchestra and a choir, just to give you a sense of the building blocks that comprise this debut record. The album is a single 55-minute composition, and substantial chunks of that runtime have not a guitar to be heard; I found myself pondering whether Ode And Elegy was ‘metal enough’ to be reviewed on the site, but ultimately opted in favour of doing so, mainly for two reasons. First, there are major portions of the album that are metallic, but second, the darkness of the ambient/orchestral sections of the album fits thematically with much of the other music featured on this site.

Now, one of the genre tags I mentioned above was ‘post-metal’; having listened to the record a few times, I kinda buy the tag, but it’s not a perfect fit. When “Ode And Elegy” is heavy, it generally takes on a bleak, trudging doom or driving post-hardcore form, although certain segments run closer to the type of climax one might hear on a post-metal record. How it perhaps fits the tag more closely, however, is in the dynamic composition of Ode And Elegy; this is a record that takes the soft/loud contrasts and extended dynamic builds that define post-rock and post-metal, and extends that concept across a single hour-long entity, one that gradually ekes its way towards a forceful explosion of sound through glacial development of piano, strings, harp, acoustic guitars and hushed, ethereal vocals, only to pull back almost entirely and start again once reaching each emphatic climax.

Given that it’s nearly an hour long, it’s difficult to briefly cover all that one might hear on “Ode And Elegy”; the track moves in cycles, oscillating between morose delicacy and waves of crushing sound, but the forms in which those extremes exist vary across the record. There’s several sections where the string quartet takes centre stage and conjures up the kind of stirring darkness that Musk Ox and their ilk bewitch listeners, whereas other sections are so sparse that the song almost spills over into dark ambient territory. When the music does build up steam, it may involve an ominous march of clean-yet-sinister guitar, processional percussion and passionate strings, such as the sequence about a third of the way through that leads into a brief burst of doom that should appeal to SubRosa fans. However, it may instead be bells, chimes and booming ritualistic drums that herald an inevitable descent into darkness.

Ode And Elegy is clearly a passion project of Wilson’s, with statements indicating that this record is a decade in the making, and with the project’s website asking people, instead of paying for the album, to share it with other music lovers (as I hopefully will be doing by way of this review). As with many passion projects as ambitious as this one, it isn’t flawless; there are portions during which the album does drag, particularly at its quietest. However, even if I didn’t like the music, the ambition alone on this album earned my respect; as it turns out, I dig a lot of the music on this album, from the stirring string quartet arrangements to the grim funeral doom section around the half-hour mark, and even more so as the record emotionally intensifies from this point onwards, evoking aspects of Amenra, SubRosa and CHVE at times during the increasingly epic closing 20 minutes of “Ode And Elegy” (particularly when the choirs and brass get involved).

I can’t make any guarantees that one will like Ode And Elegy, but those that enjoy the more ambitious and unorthodox musical ventures that arise in the sphere of metal, even those lurking more at the periphery of that sphere, would be doing themselves a disservice if they don’t at least give this record a try.