Miscellaneous notes on Envy's "The Fallen Crimson" (2020)

How can I describe the experience of finding Envy's The Fallen Crimson? 

It is currently night-time in Lawrence, Kansas. I have spent something like 17-and-a-half hours awake, divided between going to class, reviewing statistics for an exam on Thursday, and getting shit done for grad school applications. My energy is at a low; the tiredness is melding with the natural decline in Adderall density in my bloodstream, and the math-induced headache is making thinking difficult. There's a guy behind me, in my scholarship hall's study room, that has been playing ARK: Survival Evolved (by himself, but very loudly) for some two hours, now. This confounding variable does not facilitate my work.

I have taken breaks, but they were limited. One time, earlier today, I worked on some ideas for my short story anthology project; the other time, I got three BUCK-TICK albums queued up on Apple Music to try to find some favorite tracks to add to a "BUCK-TICK Bangers" playlist. Later, I messed around with <a certain game>'s character studio, trying to visualize some scenes from my writing. Then, 2 AM hits; I'm out of juice again. So I do what I always do when I'm out of ideas; I go to YouTube and find the first music recommendation it sends me, and dive in.

YouTube has a reputation, it seems, for giving out bad recommendations. While I can't speak for other people's experiences with the platform, this is unambiguously not the case for me --- at least insofar as music is concerned. I don't know when it started, or how, but YouTube knows my passion for indie music and exploring new sounds. So, sometimes, after a couple hours of playing videos in the background while I work, something will make its way into the rotation --- an album, perhaps, only released on bandcamp, or from a foreign band with very little recognition. Oftentimes, these albums are vaporwave; sometimes, they're breakcore, and yet others they're dungeonsynth. Sometimes, however, they hover in the post-rock range; and while these particular albums tend to be hit-and-miss, this one sure wasn't.

Going Back Through Time

As soon as The Fallen Crimson began, I was transported to another time. I was suddenly back at my old high-school, in my room, fresh out of a brutal headache. I didn't sleep much, then, and when I did, I slept very poorly. I was forehead-deep in depression, crying myself awake and then back to sleep many days per week. Sometimes, I lacked the strength to even get out of bed; and so I'd roll around, left to right, until I got tired of doing that, and assumed a mortiferous, cadaver-like stillness. 

At that time, I listened to a lot of music. I couldn't do much of anything else, and so it was a time for a lot of experimentation and immersion. It was then that I first fell in love with jazz, with the angular eccentricities of King Crimson, and, perhaps most importantly, with the distant, dreamy, melodic, and emotionally intense soundscapes of post-metal. I listened to Rosetta's Quintessential Ephemera more times than I could count, those days; and to Cult of Luna's A Dawn to Fear, and to Alcest's Kodama and Spiritual Instinct. The longitude of their sound, its melancholy ephemerality, its pained climaxes, the heartfelt agony of its vocals, resonated with me. The sound of "poste," as I jokingly called it to my Brazilian friends, brought me relatability, for one, in its darkest lows, and hope, in its brightest highs. 

Soon, high school had passed. I had begun the pained and arduous process of recovering from my depression, which would be an effort that would last for the entirety of the next 3 and a half years, and as a matter of fact continues on to this day. My interests changed; from metal and jazz, I went to Dream Theater-esque prog-metal, and then to progressive and avant-garde rock. I'd left "poste," but "poste" hadn't left me; sometimes, between my normal rotations, I'd sneak in something like Anathema's Weather Systems, or Porcupine Tree's Fear of a Blank Planet --- albums that, although not "poste" in essence, evoked the musical character and spirit of it. I don't know why I had never listened to Rosetta again, after so many years, even though it was one of my favorite bands in high school; I think part of me was afraid of revisiting that moment that was so closely attached to their sound.

And then, Envy's The Fallen Crimson. 

It wasn't the same thing --- it couldn't have been. Envy, as I quickly discovered, was a Japanese band; unlike the old "poste" classics I'd listened to in my day, they were influenced by hardcore punk music, and were not black-metal-production-pilled (as we used to say in high school, "cave production"). They make frequent use of spoken word poetry, and of nods to pop ballads, and of (surprisingly) some proggy inserts here and there. It was different. But the spirit was the same: the same anguish, the lows building to highs, the beautiful, heart-melting melodies, engorged with authentic passion and sensation. It was a sensual experience, much like those old Rosetta and Alcest albums were for me, back then. And it was a bridge, that every next track built itself farther and farther back to that time. But instead of pain, it brought me joy; it brought me the joy of listening to that music, of listening to my feelings in song, of falling in love with a new band, of finding music that encapsulated my moment and my experience. It was good. 

A Conclusion(?)

I don't think I can recommend this to everyone. I sure couldn't recommend "poste" to everyone back then, although I did try. The heaviness of the guitars, the proggy inserts, the scream-vocals... there's a lot here that can put people off (although, unlike my post-metal favorites, the production on this record is pristine, and does not sound like it was recorded in a cave). But I can say that it is one of the most remarkable, powerful, and touching albums that I've come across in the last 3 years of listening to music. 

If that sells you on it, give it a spin.