With its simple drums and beautiful layers, Orchid Mantis aka Thomas Howard gave us a slowcore daydream, an almost transcendental record.
Howard’s ever-changing style, from the synthetic tones of the past to layers of guitar this time around, makes “Possession Pact” something still so very fitting in his catalogue. And I couldn’t be more excited—especially with the clear-as-ever vocals singing poem-like lyrics.
The opening track, “Spirit Circle,” faded in like a memory coming over me. A distorted conversation in the background and chants of “see you staring / all composed” and “a cypher in there / answer to despair,” desperately searching for something in what no longer is, creating a mysterious spiral. The track strips down for a moment with “letting it go” before sinking even deeper. It all sets the tone of the record beautifully.
I was very much enchanted from the start.
Three tracks down the line, “All Passing Days,” with its haunting composition, brought a heaviness of despair: “it’s hollow underneath / no answers for anything.” Yet “you know it’s real” lingers like smoke in wood. Even with “memories fading”—maybe, presumably, the bad ones—we hear that “there’s answer for everything,” like going over it again and again, coming back harder: “because you know it’s real.”
Despite its slow heart, the record goes by fast—like watching a candle burn in an otherworldly manner. Every song gets you thinking, especially the very title track, which I think has a quite illuminating, obviously beautiful tone to it.
Suddenly it’s track 11: “Winding, Unwinding.” It has stolen my heart away. Each note comes on softly, and each word pierces hard: “meet me inside the same dream / fall into the beginning / everything is so still here” —a warm, bittersweetness toward the end. I honestly had to stop walking for a second. “Firestarter,” the finale, and its amazing backward synths, is just about everything I could ask for as the close to this body of work.
I think “Possession Pact” is a perfect annotation to feelings so profound that I can’t help but immerse myself during a listen. And definitely my new favourite Orchid Mantis album (sorry, a field with no edges). So whether you are—as I was—in the woods, driving back home, in bed, or just about in your own head, I’d recommend you put this record on and take it in. Feel it. Every one of those 33 minutes—even the inescapable sirens at the end.
“Forever after, anyways.”
Written by Ivy
