Herbarium - Of Aconitum
A release from 2021 via Realm of Sleep, physical cassette-copy sadly sold out... but I will review it anyway!
It´s another one of those interesting side-projects by Jason Browne ( Windersinnen, Boreal Dawn, Shelter Ov Shadows, etc). As you can see on the cover artwork (and the album title), then yes... we are dealing with something of a druidic sort of nature. Herbarium is all about the preservation of herbs and plants (drying them and pressing them). While Of Aconitum is about a certain plant that either can be used as medicine or to create a poison to kill! Also known as Wolfsbane or Queen of Poisons. And yes, the cover artwork has a Wolfsbane on the artwork. And the skull?. Yes, a wolf's skull (made a Google search on that!). For the movie-nerds, the Wolfsbane is also featured in the classic horror-flick Wolfman with Lon Chaney.
There is only 1 track on the album/cassette, the track is on the A-side... the one with the cool sticker on. An almost 20 minutes long piece. And yes, it´s simply called Of Aconitum.
An old-school proto dungeon-synth lo-fi sound kicks, think a slower early Mortiis or Old Tower. Lovely low-key martial drummings and sorrow-filled and epic organ synth-work, grim and cold stuff... just the way I like it!. The esoteric and archaic feeling is there, and the sense of timelessness is absolutely breathtaking.
A kind of dungeon synth album that can give the listener a sense of what real dungeon synth is all about, Jason Browne absolutely nails it down on this! Ancient castle ruins in a heathland forgotten in time. This stuff also takes me back to that classic series called Robin of Sherwood, a darker and more occult-driven version of the Robin Hood story. Brilliant!
There isn't much to tell really, a one-track album that gives the listener a truly epic and mysterious journey into a forgotten realm. This is real dungeon synth at its most serious moment, without drunken dwarfs and silly elves. Go and use 19 minutes of your time on this, you won't regret it!
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