Review: Clay Rendering – Snowthorn

Clay Rendering
Snowthorn

Hospital Productions
Street: 11.05
Clay Rendering = Natural Snow Buildings + Blessure Grave + Vatican Shadow

Clay Rendering, Mike Connelly’s (ex-Wolf Eyes, Hair Police, The Haunting) and wife Tara’s (also of The Haunting) latest project, spans from epic and grandiose to intimate and minimalist. Given Connelly’s pedigree, Clay Rendering are melodic and restrained, moving from high BPM post-industrial goth to doom rock. Cathartic instrumental tracks center around the epic pull of synthesized strings and dirge-paced cadence or simple, minimalist piano lines with a dark sky of building dread in the upper-register drone and church-bell percussion. Snowthorn builds from the ground up, creating paced and measured mood pieces that could easily score an episode of Game of Thrones (I’ve actually never seen Game of Thrones). Such solemnity is also reserved for Connelly’s twinned, piercing guitar arpeggios that ascend and circle minimal synth lines like worried fire. It’s easily one of the most delivered-upon promises of 2015. –Ryan Hall