Wings Of An Angel – Princess Of The Nile Returning From Manhunt In Honor Of Her Particular Religion Of Peace (2016)

It's absolutely impossible to keep up with albums from both Scott Lawlor and Wings Of An Angel. These musicians nearly release a new album every month or so, and that means there are literal dozens of albums from each. Wings Of An Angel actually offer their entire discography (which is nearing a hundred albums) for a name your own price equivalent, but you should first know what you're getting into with this kind of music. Of the many albums, he particularly chose to submit this one and I'm not really sure how much of these tracks I could stand for a long period of time. But keep reading, as this dark cloud does have an intriguing silver lining. The beginning of the record began with an almost unbearable and excruciating noise that felt far worse than nails scratching on a chalkboard. It took an awful lot of willpower to make it through, and there were times where I just had to completely tune it all out to preserve my sanity. You have to understand that these pieces are very long, most of them ranging in the double digits and one in particular being a half an hour.

Fortunately, the record eased up as I went on (and yes, I listened to this disc from beginning to end) and by the time I reached the third of four tracks, (the song titles are ridiculously long, so let's just call it the third track) I was starting to hear something of an intriguing sound pattern. I mean, this record can carve your soul. It is downright painful to listen to and not meant for the squeamish. If this is the sound of terror, as horrifying and pungent as such a thing can be – well, Wings Of Angel have done a fantastic job capturing that. There are people who might succumb to madness if left alone with this kind of music for too long. You might even be able to turn a sane and relatively normal person into a raving lunatic after long periods of exposure to these albums (if they are similar, I do not know) and I'm not kidding. Obviously the composer works very hard on these pieces and I don't want to shame his art here as I wouldn't like it very much if mine was torn to pieces either; but I will say that it makes for a very taxing listen to which only those with a cast-iron stomach would be able to endure without issue.

Hence, there is a silver lining in the only real track that I liked here, but felt was phenomenal – namely the finale entitled, “In A Typically Histrionic Despair Attack, She Joined Circus Training For Sexually Vulnerable Clowns” which rounds out to a mesmerizing and wholly deep meditative atmosphere. The artist here in question does consider himself a magician and most likely seems to delve into that of chaos. The music here must then be an extension of his own emotions, whether they are that of severe trauma or meditative tranquility. In any case, the finale for this recording consists of what I might consider to be one of the most relaxing and overall uplifiting pieces I've heard outside of my personal atmosphere collection. I am hoping there are more pieces like this within the artist's lengthy discography and I will enjoy using this music for the doctor recommended meditation that I was asked to undergo regarding my severe anxiety regarding the world and society at large.

"What begins as utter insanity ends with the most lulling and unexpected feeling that I could have ever foreseen from a disc of this nature." I'm quite sure he'll add that quote into the Bandcamp along with the many others sampled there, of which John Zorn is mentioned, but I don't really think you can speak about these kinds of approaches if you don't thow it to people like Zorn, Roach and several others who've made this music what it is. Quite obviously the chaos in the beginning is not very indicative of Zorn's work, but that isn't to say that he wasn't an influence.

Oddly enough, what is actually more interesting to me than the piece itself, is the title. When I first saw it, I kept thinking that it translates roughly to “Isis or what we should say ISIL/Daesh and of course, Islam which is referred to it's followers as a religion of peace.” Alan Moore always called them “Mohammedans” and they've of course been fighting the same wars since man was a thing. Yes, it's been that long. Even more peculiar was the fact that I happened upon a man practicing Zoroastrianism. Apparently that is also coming back. So I'm waiting on people to start anointing graves with menstrual blood again as they worship the Venus of Willendorf. Let's just go all the way fucking back, why don't we? Obviously, seeing a man (here in the US, actually) seriously practicing Zoroastrianism (he apparently came into an occult group asking for some sort of way to increase the size of his member, which is how I happened upon him – but that isn't important) in this day and age was something I thought was profound, as it literally predates both Christianity and Islam by a vast number of years. In any case, mankind is certainly changing for some odd and unknowable reason, by which I find myself kind of stumped on. In this day and age, I wouldn't be surprised if the news over in the Nordic regions started reporting frost giants. I'd simply sip my coffee and watch as they over powered our frail human armies and played basketball with their rolled up tanks. Slam Dunk!

In all honesty though, you should really give this one a listen as I find it quite disagreeable and agreeable to my senses at the same fucking time. It literally is a bizarre sense of balanced chaos, by which I am a bit curious to further discover. But I only have ninety-three more albums on this list to go, which you can also check out when you give the artist's Bandcamp page a view. Just make sure that you search for “Wings Of An Angel” and not “On The Wings Of An Angel” where you will find that ridiculous Sarah Mclachlan track which played repeatedly on oversaturated and unbearably long ASPCA commercials. I've heard that most of those animals are sent off to China anyway, and if that concerns you, then you should probably get your pets spayed and neutered as the great Bob Barker recommended. Blam!

(4 Tracks, Over 100:00)

7/10