Bored sitting at my desk on a Saturday morning, I was recommended an album called Once in a Long, Long While by a band named Low Roar. The first song on this album is aptly named “Don’t Be So Serious.” The fog outside my window blended perfectly with this haunting and dreamy singing; it was upbeat yet calming and somehow felt like acceptance.
Ever since that morning, I’ve fallen in love with this project. Low Roar’s self-titled album, which debuted in 2010, sets the tone for the rest of the project. Ryan Karazija, the lead singer, unfortunately, passed away in 2022 due to complications with pneumonia; his last album, released at the beginning of this year, is titled House In The Woods.
After Low Roar’s self-titled album, they released an album simply titled 0, which is by far one of their most experimental albums. The first song on this album, “Breathe In,” feels like that calming feeling when you stop, clear your thoughts, and take a couple of deep breaths. It is an impressive thing to evoke that emotion from a song.
0 is perfect at creating a feeling. All of the songs express complex feelings through the sound alone. While the lyrics are important and show the intention and more personal elements of the music, the way Karazija sings them in a haunting and dreamy voice is what really creates this effect. 0 Has a very different instrumental style on some tracks like “I’ll Keep Coming,” which seems to use a tape recorder as the sound along with synth to create this robotic contrast from the rest of the album.
ross. their 4th album tells the story of Karazija and his perception of the world around him. Many of Low Roar’s albums tell the story of Karazija, his experience in Iceland, and his feelings of being homesick, while the entire music project was recorded in Iceland. In “Darkest Hour,” the song begins with “Home’s so far away/and I’m so far from home.”
What drew my attention to Low Roar so much was that every album felt like the last, which made me more interested in listening to the next album. Low Roar created interesting feelings with all of their music. Every album impresses me with how well it allows you to immerse yourself in the music.
It’s also quite impressive that this was all being recorded on a laptop in Karazija’s kitchen. That only stopped when Hideo Kojima, a well-known video game developer, found a Low Roar CD in a shop while visiting Iceland for inspiration on the landscape and environment for his video game Death Stranding, which then came out featuring many Low Roar tracks, boosting their popularity heavily.
Most of the tracks featured in Death Stranding came from Once in a Long, Long While. The first album I heard, and it really hit me when I listened to it. The album itself feels like being surrounded by fog with its chilly synth and Karazija’s haunting voice.
Low Roar’s music, for many reasons, is unique. Its sound is different from any other band I have listened to, which is why House In The Woods is such a gut-punch of an album. Prior albums tell his story and show his perspective, so to hear him come to terms with his own death is brutal.
House In The Woods is the final album for Low Roar, marking the last thing Karazija will ever make, and has some of the most upbeat and depressing songs in his entire discography.
“Just How It Goes” accepts the reality of his situation, singing the title of the song several times, coming to terms with his fate, and being one of the most upbeat songs on the album. “Gone Fishing” is a deceiving title, being an incredibly eerie song and very thought-provoking in the context of the album.
“House In The Woods” is the last piece on the album. It truly feels like a finale to the entire project, as the music progressively gets slower throughout the whole project until this point. When I heard the lyrics for the first time, “I’m beginning to drown/I’m staring death in the eyes,” my heart sank, hearing someone sing that they know the end is soon for them.
Three years before I listened to this album, Karazija had been suffering from pneumonia and died due to complications with it. This whole album feels like a goodbye through the instrumentals alone, and that shows how unique Karazija’s sound was.
I urge everyone who reads this to go on a walk through one of our local forests with the cold and quiet serenity and put some of Low Roar’s music on and let yourself dive into it as you explore the world around you, feeling as if you’re lost in a dream.
