Vaura - Sables

Hailing from Brooklyn, Vaura’s experimental and shoegazy approach to post-metal and black metal on their debut LP in 2012, Selenelion, offered to be black metal’s answer to My Bloody Valentine, before Deafheaven’s Sunbather blow the lid off the entire premise a year later. Selenelion, though, did quickly get Vaura signed to Profound Lore to release the band’s sophomore album, The Missing, that very next year, a satisfactory confirmation of their artistic credence with the style they had set themselves toward. But as Deafheaven grew into a widely revered name and twisted through their own style over two more full-length releases, Vaura sat quiet, until now.
Sables is the band’s third album and one that sees them subtly, but noticeably side-stepping the thick metallic swells of atmosphere they started their career on, leaning more on electronic rock and ambient elements than on anything metallic to drive the energy of their sound this time around. The direction Vaura have turned toward on this album is not too dissimilar to the path Ulver went on with The Assassination of Julius Caesar in 2017, and for the most part the results are similarly successful.
Sables reveals both a positive takeaway and a negative one about the band in this new light. The positive is that the band are not reliant on the metallic aspects of their sound to create compelling music, and they do not flounder nearly as ungracefully as so many other bands like fishes out of water who take huge steps away from their metallic roots. The bad news is that this album shows/suggests that Vaura still need something to inject energy into their music, because when it’s just them and shoegaze alone, they don’t quite know what to do to aside from stir some melancholy around in the thinner atmosphere.
Even if it’s not metal, the band still seem to need to inject some form of rock into their music, whether it be experimental electronic rock or the tried and true sounds of new wave. The new wave ambiance of the still subtly groovy “Espionage” definitely signals this shift right out of the gate with evident Depeche Mode influences all over the track that give it a direct energy that provides a strong foundation for the band’s shoegazy elements to build on top of, and the second song, “Zwischen”, further solidifies the building metropolitan ambiance through sensual drum beats, tasteful electronic percussion foundation, and measured synth flair. The band’s new wave influences show up once again on the steady beat and shimmering guitar ambiance of the song “No Guardians”, with the synth line and melodic guitar interplay in particular bringing out a sense of emotional rawness from the somber vocals.
It’s the more vibrant songs like these that reveal where the band’s strengths lie in this more rock-exclusive trajectory they’ve set themselves on. In contrast with the new wave energy of these songs, the more droll ambient rock cuts like “Eidolon” and “The Lightless Ones” reveal how dependent upon, or at least more confident within, a more energetic context Vaura are and how much more the band can channel through the more fully expressive side of this new sound for them that shows up on the album’s more energetic songs.
A step away from the blackgaze “scene” if you will might have come from the band simply wanting to not be able to be so easily pigeonholed by apathetic newcomers or detractors, which is an entirely understandable desire, but the band bucking a trend despite being founded in their style before it was even a huge trend has proved to be a mixed risk. Sables isn’t as consistently immersive and emotive as its two predecessors, but it does open a door for the band to suceed outside the now-lucrative syle they began with.
Unlocking the door to more/10

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