Aldebaran (2016)

I warned you that the end was coming, and here we now are at the last album in the Natural Snow Buildings discography.  We're done.  We made it.

The only hitch is 2016's Aldebaran, their last album to date, is a 6-disc, 5¾-hour album, and as I said for the similarly sized Daughters of Darkness, ain't nobody got that much time for one album.

I say "6-disc" but actually Aldebaran never saw physical release as CDs or vinyl LPs.  It was a 2016 Netlabel Day release by Vulpiano Records, and is available as 6 "virtual" discs in digital format only. It's really just 25 tracks that are organized into six suggested discs, but can really be grouped together in any way.  

Also, Vulpiano has the album available on their Bandcamp page for free download and streaming.  I do wonder about Natural Snow Building's business model, as most of their extensive discography is out of print and most of what's still available is available for free.  

In any event, rather than take on the entire mammoth recording in one gulp, we'll do it one virtual disc at a time, like we did for DoD and also to savor the last album in that long queue.  Disc 1 contains four tracks:

1. The Green Monolith (12:40)
2. The Never Dies (17:56)
3. Unknown Tongues (2:04)
4. The Blind (13:59)

Aldebaran was recorded between 2012 and 2014, but unlike the other albums from this period (Beyond the Veil and The Night Country) does not present their signature folk-drone sound but is closer to the industrial drone of DoD (2009) or the space drone of The Centuari Agent (2010).  Listen to opening track The Green Monolith to hear what I mean.

The Green Monolith consists of multiple layers of sustained guitar piled up over one another.  While not as harsh as some of their 2008 recordings, it's still a far cry from the pastoral sound of their folksier recordings.  The Never Dies continues in the same vein, with some of the guitar layers pealing like bells, while a short folk song underlies Unknown Tongues.  The Blind is probably the harshest track on this disc, and at times evokes the noise drone of the hellscape trilogy (Between the Real and the Shadow, The Wheel of Sharp Daggers, and Slayer of the King of Hell) without quite reaching that nails-on-a-blackboard level of intensity.

The question here is what am I going to do with my time after we're through these six discs?  Finally come out of quarantine and become a productive member of society once again?  Or find another prolific but obscure band to follow, like Pete Namlook? Or start on Mehdi and Solange's side projects (Isengrind and TwinSisterMoon)?