On this album's cover portrait, Emil Amos is pictured posing moodily in a gloomy graffiti-lined alley. This turns out to be an accurate indication of what lies within since Amos has the aspect of a man more at ease dwelling in the darkness on the edge of town than living under the glare of the city's bright lights.
Amos is a multi-instrumentalist who, as a member of drone-rockers Om and Grails, has built a reputation for dour and occasionally dirgey pieces with a focus more on instrumental-rock than pop balladry.
With Fall Of Man he favours a more conventional song-based format while still remaining true to his 1970s classic rock influences. His second album for Thrill Jockey is presented as "a deliberate, melancholy album of epic scope" to give fair warning that it contains little in the way of catchy hooks or sing-along choruses,
Recorded in Portland, Oregon and Brooklyn, Amos plays every instrument on the ten tracks with the exception of Aged Wine which features Brian Markham on bass and Adam Bulgasem on drums.
While the songs strike a personal note, it is revealing that he largely adopts a third person perspective. It is as if he wishes to philosophically distance himself from the emotional content.
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As a result there is no sense of liberation or catharsis as he pursues pessimistic themes on tracks with portentous titles such as Being Possessed Is Easy and Disintegration Is Law.
The muddy stoner rock and doom-laden lyrics establish beyond doubt that we are living in Mercenary World that he has no truck with. Discipline suggests resignedly that having one's life structured by a monotonous job is as good a survival tool as any.
The three to four minute songs contain elements of Todd Rundgren minus the showy flourishes and shades of a mournful Beck. In other words, it maintains a steadfastly pessimistic mood that preserves his cultish outsider status.
The melodic piano ballad,Trampled Down, which closes the record, offers a glimmer of tenderness but coming so late in proceeding this feels like little more than a token gesture.
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