Sarvok – Cabin in Space (Review)

There is nothing quite like being able to lay down in bed and fall back into an album as you let all that it is wash over you. It’s a form of listening that has become far more scarce with how portable music has become in the modern age, but any true music fan knows the sheer joy of just falling into any given release in order to truly experience what it has to offer. Atmospheric albums, in particular, take this to an extreme that we rarely get to see out of many other styles given the very nature of the sound being immersive right from the very beginning, but it still takes an exceedingly talented act to pull it off, not to mention doing it on the band’s first effort. Without a single instance of stuttering or mishap, Sarvok comes to us with an album that’s as dark as it is overwhelming delicious to lean back into, and it’s with every subsequent listen that sees “Cabin in Space” become richer and richer.

Just dipping your toe into this debut gives you a brilliant idea into what you’re in for with the entirety of this album, and there’s really only one word that can describe everything that’s up to offer in this album: murky. Many atmospheric albums in this same vein do their best to make a killing off the very fact that the listener is entirely free to make the record whatever theme or setting that they can desire such that every listener has a unique experience, but that’s not quite what’s at play here throughout “Cabin in Space”. With every step, Sarvok guides us through their immensely dark universe that feels like an odd child that’s born from many different worlds and minds from the world of everything Lovecraftian, Ridley Scott’s Alien, and the unsettling neurosis that’s accompanied by everything touched by David Lynch, and to say that Sarvok pulled it off would be to greatly undermine what has been accomplished here. The absolute entirety of “Cabin in Space” is so much of what has already made this style so enthralling to begin with from its immersive approaches and environments that feel no less than tantalizing even in its smallest moments, and with some strategically simple guitarwork, it’s hard to deny that these four tracks are anything less than potent to the very core.

It’s one thing to create a work of any kind that is immersive, but to form one that wraps around your entire consciousness to make for an experience that’s as rich as it is dark with so much goodness to be had in its depths is something that demands to be heard no matter who’s putting it out. Sarvok has put his absolute best foot forward with this debut already shaking off any preconceptions that I had before even stepping through the threshold of “Cabin in Space”, but once I did I knew that I was in for something that is by all accounts special.

“Cabin in Space” is available via F*cking Your Creations Records and can be streamed in its entirety on Bandcamp here.

Track Listing:
1. SA4d79
2. SA54686f75676874
3. SA43616d652066726f6d
4. SA746865206162797373