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Intense and moving throughout, Six builds a fair amount of variation into its downbeat aesthetic.
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While, the Black Heart Procession does an excellent job of musically embodying October's primary mood, they'd do well to remember that it's a month made more bearable by the occasional flash of Indian summer.
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At times this fascination with dark, eerie sulkiness can have a certain kind of weird charm; more commonly, it's a grating, self-serious masquerade.
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Although titles like 'Suicide' and 'Drugs' may seem a touch overt, the songs are not overwrought cliches.
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Alternative PressThe album creeks through 13 unlucky tracks that range from minimalist, Leonard Cohen-esque piano dirges to demented waltzes with equal aplomb. [Nov 2009, p.109]
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FilterJenkins and Pilot pianist Toby Nathaniel have churned out a series of sad, often moving albums, including this one. [Fall 2009, p.98]
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The 13 songs on Six are rich and exquisitely constructed, perfectly-pitched baroque riffs and orchestration are juxtaposed with searingly compelling lyrical imagery.
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Though its overall sound is depressing industrial indie rock with nods to Leonard Cohen, Marilyn Manson and Tool, Six’s varied instrumentation, catchy songs and emotional impact make for an interesting listen.
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It’s strange to say, but the older the Black Heart Procession gets, and as their playing and instrumentation matures, their minds seems stuck in the past.
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Despite their tendency to wade dangrously close to parody, the Black Heart Procession's continuing themes of despair, gloom and doom are still what make them so appealing as they continue to defy their sunny upbringing.
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In the hands of a lesser band, Six could be depressive and trudging. But Jenkins and Nathaniel build this hellish world only to fill it with sweat-soaked fight songs against all those demons and devils. And in the end, they sound like they just might have survived.
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Across 13 tracks, Black Heart Procession deftly positions its audience in a consistent and specific environment, allowing Six to be inherently dark and blasphemous and not just a dark and blasphemous album.
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MojoMore so than on predecessor The Spell, the Procession's ominous, gothic-baroque sound now suggest angular German Expressionist cinema and the raven wing atmospheres of Edgar Allan Poe as readily as The Bad Seeds. [Dec 2009, p. 94]
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UncutThe long-running project of Pall Jenkins and Tobias Nathaniel, also of venerable indie-rockers Three Mile Pilot, BHP peddle a slo-mo country gloom, songs of heartbreak and religious dread conducted at a desultory limp. [Dec 2009, p. 85]