Soft Vigil from Flarekeeper by Frostvow

The air thins, a solitary promise taking root. This track settles into the early hours of the watch, a deliberate fusion of second-wave black metal's starkness and shoegaze's expansive reach. It opens with clean tremolo guitars, barely a shiver, underscoring a beginner's resolve, the tape hiss and chain-ruffled ambience weaving a hushed halo around a clear, aching melody. A spoken prologue, a raw whisper unique to this moment, introduces the core vow, recurring later as a soft, almost ghost-like post-chorus. The tempo builds from that hesitant pulse to brushed blasts in the choruses, where the full band warms around the refrain 'Keep the beacon human,' an initial anchor point for the album's exploration of trust and the fraying line between human and machine. It establishes the fragile steadiness inherent in such a pact, a foundational statement about endurance.

Our bleak cry from granite cliffs. Raw metal, shoegaze haze. Let it pierce you.