If you’re a dedicated metal listener, you’ve probably come across acts best described as “metal-adjacent.” Like Chelsea Wolfe and Emma Ruth Rundle, these artists collaborate with extreme metal bands and add a distinctly heavy atmosphere to distinctly not-heavy genres. One such example is the new album from Maud the Moth, the brainchild of Amaya Lopez-Carromero (also of doom/post-rock band healthyliving and a collaborator with Devouring Star, Ashenspire and others).
The Distaff is built around soft piano, ethereal vocals, sparse-but-doomy guitar and moody synth atmospheres, maintaining a constant push/pull dynamic. When things feel like they might get too soft, a guitar swells and takes the music in a heavier direction. When the piano and vocals feel too solitary, the synths and subtle-but-impressive drumming kick in. On the reverse, Maud the Moth confidently turn things down a notch, making the heavier bursts feel earned.
“This album is born from the processing of personal lived experience,” Lopez-Carromero tells Decibel, “And explores the nuances of emotional heritage in a sort of self-reflective and surreal autobiography. Despite being born of a very personal point of view, the album lacks a specific narrator and was conceived almost as a sonic trousseau, where the needlepoint, silks and other family heirlooms have been swapped for out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye memories of rural Spain by the vineyards, family disputes, old tales of wartime pains, generational breaches and finally the conflict of migration and estrangement. The songs paint dystopian pastoral scenes which evolve throughout the span of one fictional day outside of time and coherent locations and where imagination (often the only account surviving from traumatic events and gaslighting) has become indistinguishable from fact. ‘The Distaff’ attempts to acknowledge past trauma, comprehend and process some of the more difficult aspects which have contributed to our darker self and offer closure and solace through creative catharsis.”
You can listen to The Distaff below and grab the album via Bandcamp.
