Shadow Kingdom - Disc 2

Disc 2 of Shadow Kingdom starts with a pretty folk song, Sunlone, and then launches into an epic 24-minute drone, Chthonian Odyssey/Hell's Foundations/A Birth Mark Like a Scar.  The latter is the reason we've been listening to Natural Snow Buildings all through this quarantine, it's the reward for all those hours of noise drone. 

Porridge Stick Into The Fire And Dust In The Direction Of The Sun (track titles are approaching Fiona Apple lengths) is a noise drone, as is the opening track on Disc 1, The Fall of the Shadow Kingdom, but these two tracks, which bookend the album, are far more listenable, at least to me, than their earlier counterparts, and after 15 minutes, Porridge Stick segues into a somewhat quieter mood for the next 10 minutes.   After Porridge Stick, the CD version closes with a powerful track, A Burial At Sea, not on the LP version.

Simply put, Disc 2 is a masterpiece (Disc 1 is no slouch either) and Shadow Kingdom is arguably my favorite NSB record so far.  It's obvious template and point of comparison is The Dance of the Moon and the Sun, but to me Shadow Kingdom does the folk-drone formula, invented on TDotMatS, even better, and contains elements of the other phases of NSB's career (post-rock and noise drone).  Here's the track list with times:

Disc 1

1. The Fall of the Shadow Kingdom (24:45)
2. Gorgon (2:37)
3. The Fear They May Come Back/Childrens of the Seventh Circle/The Dark Road (8:21)
4. Cauled Ones of Birth Rugs (5:36)
5. Salty Tongue (5:23)
6. Go Away, Disappear (3:35)
7. Os Deus Cannibais (13:51)
8. The Faceless (4:45)
9. The Crystal Bird (10:50)

Disc 2

1. Sunbone (2:26)
2. Chthonian Odyssey/Hells Foundations/A Birth Mark Like A Scar (23:50)
3. From Their Body At Will (7:10)
4. The Desolated/Vampires Introduced To Fear/Slayer March (12:48)
5. The Vein of Invisibility (3:31)
6. Porridge Stick Into The Fire And Dust In The Direction Of The Sun (24:12)
7. A Burial At Sea (5:56)

You can listen to the entire album on YouTube.  It's not available on Spotify and I can't find it on Bandcamp or Soundcloud either, but CD versions of Shadow Kingdom sell for $50 and LP versions from $75 to $80, if you can trust the on-line retailers.

And that wraps up NSB's output for 2009!  Daughter of Darkness, Daughter of Darkness V, and Shadow Kingdom - three albums, totaling over 10 hours of music, although still not nearly as long as 2008's 16 hours.  Next up, 2010!