An Autumn For Crippled Children – Only The Ocean Knows (2012)

The highly mysterious and anonymous Dutch outfit An Autumn For Crippled Children (AAFCC for short) returns with another dreamy journey into the depths of Post Black/Shoegaze music. “
Only The Ocean Knows” delivers eight magical tracks of very aggressive and ethereal sounding music. This release is by far the band’s best effort to day, and you should definitely check it out.

“Past Tense” delivers a very cool intro that made us believe the band was going to bust out an electro track, but it nicely shifts into fuzzy distorted guitars and very rhythmical drumming. The Post-Black influences are very evident and propel this song into atmospheric brilliance. Continuing the band’s atmospheric efforts, “Yes I Know… Love And Death… Always” delivers a bit of a change of pace with some excellent ‘melodic’ passages, but the majority of the time we have the guitars pounding away, keeping the album’s atmosphere flowing.

One of our favorite tracks in this release is the very diverse “This Garden These Trees”. This track changes moods back and forth, and with a pulsating bass guitar line, you can’t really get much better than this. The hellish screams are as brutal as ever, and they nicely blend into the melodic beauty of AAFCC’s sound. “Only the Ocean Knows” is our favorite track in this release since it features a more dramatic atmosphere thanks to a heavier use of keyboards in the song. The pace is quite well managed and the trippy ‘space-ish’ section in this song makes it even more appealing.

The dramatic “The First Snow This Year”, has more of a Doom Metal vibe than the previous songs, but it still combines the Shoegaze-ish sound of the guitars with a crushing tempo. Closing the release we have the more ‘upbeat’ sounding “Uncureable” and the frenetic “The Rising Tide”, a very weird but appealing track that points more towards the Post-Rock/Post-Black side of things with excellent drumming.

In general “Only The Ocean Knows” is an excellent release that combines excellent atmospheric elements with fuzzy guitars and a heap of tempo changes. The vocals are firm and perfectly fit such a dramatic sound that AAFCC carves in this release. If you liked their older stuff, you will LOVE this release. If you never heard of the band and like Alcest, Lustre, etc., you will cream your pants with this release.

Release: September 28th, 2012

Genre: Post-Black/Shoegaze/Ambient

Country: Netherlands