Bam's Music Reviews: Above The Earth, Below The Sky (If These Trees Could Talk, 2009)

I'm Bam. I like possums, I like music! Let's get into it~

Above The Earth, Below The Sky is the debut album of post-rock band If These Trees Could Talk. Originally released independently in 2009, the album would see a few re-releases on vinyl a couple of years later, most notably through the label Metal Blade in the year 2015. The album is a purely instrumental piece, a style choice that the band has kept up consistently to this day. I happened to learn of this album through my husband showing a rather depressing video from the siege of Grozny in 1994, which featured a track from the album as background music. The combination of the video and the music left a lasting impact on me, and it ended up becoming my unconscious introduction to the post-rock genre, something that Mogwai would later bring to my attention front and center. Without further ado...

I'm going to list my one main gripe with the album first, just to get it out of the way. I'm a pretty big fan of songs seamlessly transitioning into one another on an album. It's always a pleasure hearing a song near its end, only to effortlessly move onto the next track like they were meant to be a singular track. Above The Earth, Below The Sky does this! ...kinda. It sort of goes half-and-half on the transitions, having some songs like "Above The Earth" fade nicely into "Below The Sky", or "What's In The Ground Belongs To You" fading into the droning that starts "Terra Incognita". This is great! Unfortunately, what's not so great is that other songs really don't do that. While it's understandable for the ending track, "Deus Ex Machina", I don't really understand why tracks like "Thirty-Six Silos" or "Rebuilding The Temple Of Artemis" really don't have a proper transition to their respective follow-ups.

That being said, just because the tracks don't flow into one another doesn't mean that they aren't great! The whole album has a mixture of aggressive and melancholic sounds, giving off feelings of deep turmoil and struggling with issues that don't have a clear answer, if one even exists. Zack Kelly's drumming is on point on this album, consistently keeping up the right amount of tension and excitement to the tracks that they need. "The Sun Is In The North" in particular has some amazing drum work by Kelly, slowing down and nearly silencing himself at the darker moments, only to burst out effortlessly when the harder parts of the track kick in.

The first half of the album is absolutely the stronger side, something which can be heard rather clearly from the two tracks that make up the title of the album, "Above The Earth" and "Below The Sky". The former track is a short, 2-minute track that keeps its energy at a low point for the entire duration, letting the reverb on the lead clean guitar play cleanly without the rest of the band doing much to get in its way. The latter track is a 7-minute long epic with considerably more energy packed into itself, being the only album on the track to feature anything resembling vocals in the form of a quiet background choir. Featuring many tempo changes, bouts of raging distortion leads and incredibly talented basslines by Tom Fihe, the track summarizes most of the high points of the album, and it would in any other circumstance be the top track of the album.

However, I do have to keep up my respects to where I first discovered the album. "From Roots To Needles", the first track of the album, is my absolute favorite track from this album. It starts with a harrowing reverbing arpeggio, which is quickly paired up with a powerful distortion to give the opening of the track a powerful mix of emotions like fear, dejection and anger. The energy dips back to a more depressing feeling by the halfway point of the track but picks back up with a more clear focus on crunchy rhythm guitars and ghostly tremolos from a lead in the background, only to end in the same arpeggio from the beginning before fading into a quiet rumbling.

Overall, this album is an incredibly powerful showing for a group's first album. It's packed with amazing sounds and tones, and the instrumental work from all members of the band was phenomenal. While I have my gripes with some of the flow formatting, it's not enough to make me dock major points from my score. If Trees Could Talk would go on to make two more albums, being Red Forest in 2012, and The Bones Of A Dying World in 2016. While the band hasn't been particularly active since, I have a feeling we'll be hearing from them again in the future.

Verdict: 8/10
Top Song: "From Roots To Needles"

Album name: Above The Earth, Below The Sky
Creator Name: If These Trees Could Talk
Genre: Post-Rock, Post-Metal
Release Date: March 11th, 2009

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