Pinkish Black - "Bottom of the Morning" (Album Review)

By: James Harris

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 30/10/2015

Label: Relapse Records

Cinematic without sinking to schlock or gimmick, this is music that does more than carry a tune - it builds a scene, and that scene is enveloped in fog, where steel-wielding Rippers and ephemeral neon futurists stalk and hunt each other all night, every night.

“Bottom of the Morning” CD//DD//LP rack listing:

1. Brown Rainbow

2. Special Dark

3. I’m All Gone

4. Burn My Body

5. Everything Must Go

6. Bottom of the Morning

7. The Master Is Away

Pinkish Black is:

Daron Beck | vocals, keyboards, synthesizers, mellotron

Jon Teague | drums, synthesizers

The Review:

A blood-spattered Ennio Morricone begins writing suicidal soundtracks - multiple-camera-angled Argento-esque odes to the end presided over by a several-years-dead Ian Curtis, and we have started the process of understanding the immensity of what Ft. Worth duo Pinkish Black bring to the altar.  The highly anticipated follow-up to 2013's “Razed to the Ground” takes their Lynchian noir-sludge and puts a funeral-home suit on it, expanding from horror soundtrack to the soundtrack of future horror. The record stalks and sulks, pulses with ghoulish swagger in the vein of Nick Cave's “Murder Ballads” or Goblin's most nightmarish soundtrack work. This band makes heavy with seemingly every ingredient but metal, and “Bottom of the Morning” is as abrasive and ironclad as it is slick, melodic, strange and unusual, it’s horror-villain-sexy.

Vocalist Daron Beck by turn, chants, wails, whines, and howls over tightly organized patterns of barely-secure warbling almost-chaos, nearly-noise courtesy of his and drummer Jon Teague's synthesized contributions. His apocalyptic crooning amplifies the strangeness; the eerie comfort with which PB blur genre boundaries while Teague wonderfully blends the machinic propulsion of industrial metal with a lo-fi jazzy organic vibe, a combination that underscores their whole sound. The band's ability to keep humour amid darkness (attested to in various interviews, not to mention the morbid and unfortunate tale of their origin) seems to be a key component of their ability to transgress so many sonic boundaries and write stunningly beautiful songs even as they "describe how gross and mediocre things are" in the words of Teague. 

The pinnacle of the album, the space-opera gone dirge “Burn my Body” is an intense, nearly soaring, psychedelic view on incredibly harsh and harrowing last-moments, swirling visceral unease seamlessly in with a devastatingly pop sense of melody. At times rendering such elements as krautrock or no-wave through a nearly black metal lense, whilst referencing composers like Badalamenti and John Carpenter or M. Gira. There is something on this record for everyone that likes to be chilled to the bone, from the blackened baroque groove of opener “Brown Rainbow” to the title track's almost sensual creeping from jangly romance to dissonant doom-inflected pomp/stomp. The aura at the end of that tune bleeds over into the album's last track, instrumental “The Master is Away”, with a slowed down lysergic trance-rhythm opening up into a positively uplifting final march. Even when the melody shows depressive teeth, PB continues to defy doom's expectations, pushing further and further into territory as dangerously close to 'majestic' as it is to 'metallic.'

Recorded at the Echo Lab and mastered by legend James Plotkin, the quality of the production and the material bleeds out of this album at every turn, pinkish-black blood that has already twisted several knives into the so-called "identity crisis" of the current metal scene, crossing genres at will, dragging many unwary hesher puritans down dark corridors and blind alleys to be slaughtered by the dulcet tones of this group that openly cop to being more influenced by Popul Vuh or Klaus Schulze than modern extreme metal. Cinematic without sinking to schlock or gimmick, this is music that does more than carry a tune - it builds a scene, and that scene is enveloped in fog, where steel-wielding Rippers and ephemeral neon futurists stalk and hunt each other all night every night. You can catch them in their hometown for a few shows in December, and you can find their old band The Great Old Tyrant's excellent material (that saw a fresh release recently) on their bandcamp now as well.

“Bottom of the Morning” is available here

Band info: bandcamp | facebook

Kapil Seshasayee - "Brazen" (Single Review)

By: James Harris

Album Type: Single

Date Released: 27/10/2015

Label: Fu Inle Records

The Review

Glasgow genre-defier Kapil Seshasayee dropped the single “Brazen” on October 27th on Fu Inle Records, an intense shard of proggy post-rock in the form of a promo video that follows August's EP “Crimes.”

The music on this track meshes well with the video: well-produced, low-key, melodic, but dark and intense as well - a lot of clean lines in both video and song. Like an ambient take on math rock or a noise band come clean, Kapil's guitar flows effortlessly between thick textural pulses, noisy effects, and more diverse moves such as sweeps and tapping and the like, it’s  mellow but driving.

Influences seem to range from Mogwai to Big Black, Between the Buried and Me to Polvo. The use of the waterphone was a cool touch that added a great deal to the aura of the piece. The instrument is often used in film scores, like a bunch of 60s horror movies, Poltergeist, Let the Right One In and many others. The video is a sort of multi-angle performance video, dark and spare like the song itself. It is pretty straightforward, but with some interesting cuts and angles, reflecting the way the tune has a groove that is easy to nod along to while being technical and interesting enough to keep you off guard as to what comes next - building a tension that is never quite released. Many great clear shots of the guitar work, and the vocals are clear, strong, and melodic. It is a complex tune that should further add to his reputation in anticipation of an end of the year UK tour and forthcoming debut full-length. 

‘Brazen’ is available here

Band info: bandcamp

Fvnerals - 'The Path' 7inch (Review)

By: James Harris  

Album Type: 7inch

Date Released: 03/08/2015

Label: Eerie Echoes|
Throne Records

 

There are not a lot of bands that are easily comparable to FVNERALS, as they effortlessly draw together various elements of such sounds as if Swans and My Bloody Valentine had a sleek, crooning child in an underground speakeasy.

‘The Path’ DD//7inch track listing:

1.Solemn (05:53)
2.Ruin (04:57)

The Review:

I once compared this band to Chelsea Wolfe and Earth, but on this EP FVNERALS have further matured into a unique middle path between melodic gloom and bleak monochrome doom sensibilities. These two tracks elevate the darkness and sense of style and groove that made me love their last offering, last year's 'The Light' (review) so much while adding an added menace to their sound in the form of some extraordinary funereal riffing on the second track, ‘Ruin’, this new jagged edge makes a great counterpoint to their sparse, subtle lounge-drone tone, clashing in a crushing back-and-forth that is their most exceptional material to date.  

The first song, ‘Solemn’ opens with melodic, harmonizing layers of vocals that seem to waver between optimistic tunefulness and an example of the drone to come. Still, expansive, but stark, this band has always made great use of empty space between the sounds and this record is no exception. A big emptiness exists between every instrument, a space they sometimes attempt to fill, sometimes seem to shrink from, but never ignore. A chiming guitar over smoky candle lit cabaret motif dragged through the tomb, organ drones under the spectral voice of singer Tiffany. The silence between songs is abruptly shattered, big, loud chords pounding sluggishly in the intro to ‘Ruin’ before abruptly stopping. The intervening moment heavy in its own fashion, with a dread-filled folk mesmerism. A plaintive and spooky clean guitar icily winds its way around the fog and darkness before the hook brings back the wickedly heavy riffs of the intro.

There are not a lot of bands that are easily comparable to FVNERALS, as they effortlessly draw together various elements of such sounds as if Swans and My Bloody Valentine had a sleek, crooning child in an underground speakeasy. They have drifted from the sometimes sneaky sleazy timbre of ‘The Light’ toward a more sincere, direct, path of abjection. A straight walk down a moonless road, barefoot on the rocks. The only complaint I have is that it should be much longer, as it is over before you realize it.

‘The Path’ is available here and here

FFO: Chelsea Wolfe, Earth, Swans, My Blood Valentine

Band info: official  | bandcamp

Locrian - 'Infinite Dissolution' (Album Review)

By: James Harris

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released:  24/07/2015

Label: Relapse Records

‘Standout track ‘An Index of Air’ leans into emptiness with a rattling drone, an almost imperceptibly off-time drum pulsing the intro before expanding out into tidal-waves of anguished convulsions blended with blissed out droning black that Deafheaven would burn gasoline-soaked churches to attain.’

‘Infinite Dissolution’ CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Act of Extinction

2). Dark Shales

3). KXL I

4). The Future of Death

5). An Index of Air

6). KXL II

7). The Great Dying

8). Heavy Water

9). KXL III

Locrian is:

André Foisy | Guitars, Electronics, Piano
Terence Hannum | Vocals, Moog Little Phatty, Moog Minitaur, Moog Source, MicroKorg, Arp Avatar, EDP Wasp, Mellotron M400, Samples
Steven Hess | Drums, Percussion, and Electronics

The Review:

I'll get this out of the way first; this will be my album of the year. I'm calling it in August. There are louder bands, heavier bands, faster and slower, more blackened bands, but this may as well be a recording of a howling void on peyote for all the quiet moments resemble anything like peace or tranquillity. There is very little human to be found. Even the "musical" moments are haunting and alien, evoking sonic waves of blackness and fire reminiscent of the oil that gives the album its structure. At the risk of utilizing a little Black Metal Theory (I can hear the Liturgy-fueled groans already), I admit this review may be a bit more esoteric than my others! A thick viscous plague of rotted history condensed into an enveloping flow of unrelenting black fucking metal cleverly disguised as something very much post-, complete with moments of otherworldly beauty - this time scorched into soot.

A group known as much for drone and soundscape as their metal, Chicago's Locrian return from the grave again with yet another monumental work, ‘Infinite Dissolution’. A hallmark of their sound, that it's somewhat difficult to easily separate the tracks of a record, is as present as ever. The songs are clearly defined and have beginnings and endings, but they flow into each other, overlap, repeat themes, and maintain a cohesive wall of sound and perfect production continuity throughout. This is the album Lantlos would have made if they were secretly Darkspace. 

Beginning with a fuzzy, hollow thundering that builds in speed before the godless vocals of Terence Hannum synchronize the twitching lurching stomp, deafening blasts beat a "so fast it seems slow"  pattern under the warping contortions of Andre Foisy's guitar on opener ‘Arc of Extinction’. The second track's title, ‘Dark Shales’ turns the oily hinting of the record into an overt statement on fossil-fueled meltdown - even this near ambient interlude reeks of putrefaction, of someone surfacing from the muck only to be broken by witnessing the world on fire. 

"Nemesis in our Soil 

Our Air 

Our Water"

(‘Dark Shales’)

A triptych of songs titled ‘KXL 1-3’ confirms this blackened blazing source as oil, referring to the infamous and controversial midwestern US pipeline from Canadian tar sands to gulf ports. In his epic ‘Cyclonopedia’ (to which this album could serve as exceptionally appropriate soundtrack) Reza Negarestani writes "[oil] is the lubricant current or tellurian flux upon which everything is mobilized in the direction of submission to a desert where no idol can be erected and all elevations must be burned down" - an infinite dissolution in(to) blackness that Islam would consider sinking into the heart of God.

The lyrics as always are extremely minimalistic and barely audible, shrieking that these "crude formations" are "vexed to nightmares." The atmosphere is viciously thick and claustrophobic while simultaneously somehow being vast and open, playing oil's liquid-vapor-desert game to a (black-gold-texas-) T.  Black liquid metallics melt into ether, this hypertoxic pollution recombining in the atmosphere into new burning hydrocarbon structures, then repeating this back and forth cycle over and over as if to drill home the infinitude of their dissolution. Drums and melody are found in abundance, but they rarely come anywhere near a traditional sound, preferring instead to lurk around the edges, vaporizing and reforming around recurrent themes of oil-soaked drowning and solar heat death blurring the ends of everything.

Standout track ‘An Index of Air’ leans into this emptiness with a rattling drone, an almost imperceptibly off-time drum pulsing the intro before expanding out into tidal-waves of anguished convulsions blended with blissed out droning black that Deafheaven would burn gasoline-soaked churches to attain. The only thing resembling 'clean' singing is found on this track, though they are yet more examples of bleak nihilism, knife-twisting the thought that air could be a refuge from this swamping hellscape into the realization that even the air is in "full collapse." Again a passage from Cyclonopedia becomes eerily relatable: "saturated by this timeless desert of Qiyamah (Islam's permanent apocalypse of the Now) is the cancellation of Western time", seeming to share Locrian's idea that oil as a demon has already been fully released, and now we live in the end times. In their music, the human is forever on the verge of being engulfed in this oily outer/inner space - and that may be all we have left. 

"Behold the Blank Gaze 

Of this chasm 

It Reveals the Great Dying 

Legacy of Dust 

and of Crystal 

It's a Blight"

(‘The Great Dying’)

‘Infinite Dissolution’ is available here.  More stellar art by genius David Altmedj can be view here

Band info: Facebook | Bandcamp

Vattnet Viskar - 'Settler' (Album Review)

‘This record is DENSE! With a massively thick tone, these songs sonically envelop you in billowing oppressive textures’

Album Type: Full-Length

Date Released: 29/06/2015

Label: Century Media Records

‘Settler’ CD//DD//LP track listing:

01. Dawnlands

02. Colony

03. Yearn

04. Impact

05. Glory

06. Heirs

07. Settler

08. Coldwar

Vattnet Viskar is:

Christopher Alfieri | Guitars

Casey Aylward | Bass

Seamus Menihane | Drums

Nicholas Thornbury | Vocals, Guitars

Review:

The second full-length from murky New Hampshire quartet Vattnet Viskar has a soft side, but you will have to endure the trampling to get there. Follow up to last years ‘Sky Swallower’, this 8 track ritual is pretty fucking bleak even compared to earlier work. This record is DENSE! With a massively thick tone, these songs sonically envelop you in billowing oppressive textures without getting anywhere near being too airy or too light.  

The first track takes off with a relentless blast beating. Frontman Nicholas Thornbury proclaims that "a vulgar future is coming" as ‘Dawnlands’ downshifts into an intriguing mix of poignant single-note nuance and triumphant mid-paced mosher. Great production keeps the thickness from turning muddy in the more aggressive parts, without being so slick that it loses the raw black metal edge that pushes them up out of the possible doom label. ‘Colony’, next on the list, again starts at high speeds. A jazzed out but very metal intro that leads into drums bursting at the seams in near-Liturgy fashion sets up the shock of quarter-speed breakdown conjoined with lyrics sung in binary code(!) before break necking back into the classic blur of true black metal blasting. The tune rolls out to a highly melodic riff that exposes something this band does exceptionally well, sonic expressions of upward motion, rising up, dare I say uplifting? All this without losing contact with the most blackened components of their style. This album is very black metal with very little fluff. Even their softer spectral sides give the impression of exhaustion rather than rest.

‘Yearn’ sets foot in sludge territory, slowing the riffing down before a sudden right turn off a cliff into some incredibly grimy, tightly mechanical pulsing. The middle section is the only part of the album that could be described as 'sparse' though it doesn't last long before tuning back down to sludge. The detour into slow abruptly ends with the prototypical USBM crusher and my highlight of the record, ‘Impact’. A melancholy burner from start to finish, it only lets off the gas to trick you into thinking it was letting off the gas before jerkily coming to an awkward stop 4 minutes in. I mentioned it before, but I can't get over how black and aggressive this is while still maintaining incredible moving melody and even occasionally soaring out into truly unique yet understated leads. No melodic vocals to be found, but the growls match, they interlock with the music perfectly. While the lyrics range from the bizarre (binary code!) to prototype metal odes to self-destruction and self loathing, the vocals on the other hand show single-mindedness for the rasping. 

‘It's hard to see 

What you've become

But you'll always be so beautiful to me’

‘Glory’

A juxtaposition of beatdown-simple riffs with progressive-doom flourishes provide a backdrop for one of my favourite moments of ‘Settler’, the lead at around 2 and a half minutes. Piercing, almost-psychedelic, howling into screeching into wobbling before crashing back into the tune proper, it never descends into shredding or wankery, floating above the mess. Heirs calls to mind the best of the depressive bm bands, lush almost wet riffing with beautiful haunting melody woven into the tremolo picked acceleration. Perfect action for fans of the french scene pre-Lantlos becoming jazz. The title track is another great example of the light meets dark routine, a pummelling, heavy-handed drumming approach leading into a spiking, nearly jubilant series of riffs, speeding upward, ever upward, while constantly reflecting back on the melancholy strangely woven into even the most uplifting motions. A low-end guttural riff grabs ahold a minute or so before the end and unfortunately drags a fantastic song into a repetitive muck.

While the rest of this record keep one foot in the grave no matter how bright and shiny things get, the closer ‘Coldwar’ seems to reverse this perspective into a stirring emotionally charged blackened race through the dismal, in an attempt to see some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, although he lyrics betray their scepticism about finding any, before the track collapses into a thoroughly exhausted one-last-shot.  ‘Coldwar’ is the one place where you'll find a full scale solo, flashing, exultant near-shred that shows how much restraint these guys held while crafting this impressive, huge, beautiful black metal record.

Words by: James Harris

‘Settler’ is available now

For more information:

Like: https://www.facebook.com/vattnetviskar

Listen: https://vattnetviskar.bandcamp.com/

Official: http://vattnetviskar.com/

Follow: http://twitter.com/vattnetviskar

Gangrened - We Are Nothing EP (Review)

  

Album Type: EP

Date Released: 1/11/2014

Label: Bad Road Records

‘We Are Nothing’ CD/DD track listing:

1). Lung Remover

2). Them

3). Kontti

Gangrened is:

Owe Inborr | Drums

Jon Imbernon | Guitars

Andreas Österlund | Guitars

Ollijuhani Kujansivu | Vocals

Ari Kuorikoski | Bass

Review:

Next up is a short 3 song record from Finnish doom band Gangrened, their second after a split with Spain's Hipoxia from 2013.

Blown-out speakers, amplifier worshipping, sloth-paced doom; this trio of exigent and iron-handed tunes have a cohesion, that are not simply three songs in a row but one record complete. The thickness of the tone and enveloping textures evoke backbreaking and brutality, and even when the party starts on the closer "Kontti" (named after a colloquialism for a 24 pack) they still drive home sledgehammer nihilism as well as some of the greats of the genre.

Yawning feedback gapes at every spare second of track 1, "Lung Remover." Between skull-smashing slugs of raw doom, speakers howl in pain along with vocalist Ollijuhani Kujansivu, over a deliberate, dismal plodding that feels like it stretches you out  until you're pulled nearly apart. At the moment of snapping (7:16) a filthy breakdown bangs your head until your face is a bloody unrecognizable mess and a Supercoven-soaked wall of riffs kicks you over and over while you're down. As with many songs exceeding 12 minutes, it overstays a bit at the end, indeed I think it would have been more urgent and ended with some heavier tension, if just skipped the last 2 minutes, overall the song is a neck-wrecker nonetheless.

"Them" follows, upping the pace from funereal to sludgy. After a ridiculous sample about chasing a helicopter pilot, metal wastes no time. Churning riffs play off caveman drums, somehow dragging and kinetic at the same time. The halfway mark gets a jumpstart into dirty hardcore territory, bringing to mind Fistula's faster moments before a ruthlessly simplistic groove pulverizes the final minute to fade out.

‘Kontti’ is a tribute/almost-cover of Black Flag's song "Six Pack" from their ‘Damaged’ album. They effortlessly inject the grime of the Flag into a ripping stoner-groove mosher that won't let you stop bobbing your head, fist clenching a crushed can in the air.

25 minutes of bludgeoning. The restrained beginning of the breakdown in ‘Lung Remover’, followed by the swell into full volume, is one of the heaviest things I've heard in a while. These guys know how to make a racket and hopefully we don't have to wait another year for the next release.

‘We Are Nothing’ is already available on their bandcamp (gangrened.bandcamp.com) and in CD from  Moscow-based Bad Road Records  (www.facebook.com/badroadces). A cassette release will be issued via (https://www.facebook.com/swapmeatrecords) over the forthcoming weeks

FFO: Fister, Fistula, other Fist-based bands

Words by: James Harris

For more information:

gangrened.bandcamp.com

http://www.facebook.com/Gangrened

Fvnerals - The Light (Album Review)

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 1/12/2014

Label: Eerie Echoes / Throne Records

‘The Light’ DD/LP track listing:

1. Oath (04:32)
2. Vakna (05:48)
3. Aryd (05:11)
4. Shine (05:27)
5. Tiga (03:33)
6. Closer (05:07)
7. The Light (Part I) (03:36)
8. The Light (Part II) (05:55)

Bio:

Fvnerals is a band from Brighton. Syd (guitar) and Antoine (drums) met Tiffany (vocals/synth) in the south coast town of Brighton in the beginning of 2013.  They recorded and released their first EP “The Hours” in February via their label Eerie Echoes and started gigging in May the same year. In the beginning of 2014, Syd and Tiffany released an album and toured with their side project Myyths putting Fvnerals on hiatus for a few months. During the summer of 2014, the trio moved in together and started playing as a band again, working on new songs that led to the recording of their debut album “The Light”.

Review:

It's been a long wait since this trio's early 2013 EP ‘The Hours’, but immensely worth it as their debut full length is a sparse and elegant jewel that has already earned many repeat plays. A fully-realised sound, well-mixed, well recorded. Awash in Earthish-tones and haunting drones, it envelopes you with emptiness. Clean, often subdued, but seething under it's sleek hood; it has an eerie menace to it that evokes the slowest of shoegazers getting ritually knifed in a basement by Chelsea Wolfe and Bohren und der Club of Gore.

After an unearthly intro, briefly narrated by ethereal-to-unintelligibility vocals, the second track ‘Vakna’ is a mesmerizing standout on the album. A persistent drone builds in intensity, meshing beautifully with vocalist Tiffany's echo-heavy wailing and forlorn melody. Smoky, sultry singing juxtaposed with shattered laments, carry so much of this album, but ‘Aryd’ comes of as positively noir in a sensual femme-fatale turn, on top of a nodding groove and an almost sleazy motif. "It drags you down, to where it finds you"…I keep wanting to compare this to a King Dude, Crippled Black Phoenix, or even Nick Cave at times despite not having a lot of technical or musical similarities. They share something else, that vibe of resolute negativity, restless darkness. Something ephemeral in the gloom connects them. Musically they resemble nothing so much as the aforementioned Earth and Chelsea Wolfe, at times channelling the darkest moments of Have a Nice Life, or a freshly showered Giles Corey.

Skipping ahead, the fifth tune on this disc, ‘Tiga’, teases a release that never comes. The pulsing undertones of heaviness from the climactic moments, which are scattered throughout the album never show themselves, and it maintains its tense peace until the end. Following that with a more accessible gloom-rock piece titled ‘Closer’, the band shows a little more range than on the rest of the album; more musicality, less drone. Yet more melody and the interesting choice of a distinctly -metal- drumming style, complete with double bass, under these harmoniously bleak auspices leading up to a crashing end. ‘Closer’ fades out to a hum that begins ‘The Light Pt 1’.: an instrumental drone track serving as introduction to ‘Pt 2’. The haunting becomes more aggressive on this final dirge; a seance gone awry, a spook that's searching for you. Aptly placed at the end, maybe because it finds you?

A spectral vigil for the death of shoegaze, a cadaverous take on the cabaret, this album is dark and droning enough to satisfy doomsters while maintaining a sound on the far end of an austere gothic restraint, and the members' other bands aren't bad at all either. If this band tickles your fancy be sure and check out (www.myyths.com), (www.simianhunters.bandcamp.com), and (www.chromes.bandcamp.com). ‘The Light’ is coming out in a few weeks on Throne Records (http://www.thronerecs.com) and a couple tracks are posted on their bandcamp (www.fvnerals.bandcamp.com). For now you can listen to ‘The Hours’ for free there, while you are waiting for ‘The Light’, as anxious as I am.

Words by: James Harris

You can pick up a copy here

For more information:

http://fvnerals.com/

http://fvnerals.bandcamp.com/album/the-light

https://www.facebook.com/Fvnerals

Nauseahtake - Laws of Multiversal Gravitation (Album Review)

Album Type:  Full Length

Date Released: 1/9/2014

Label: Self Release

‘Laws of Multiversal Gravitation’ DD/LP track listing:

1). The Crust (25:09)

2). Nautilus/Artifact (12:40)

3). Flooding Iguanas/Waters (24:07)

The Band:

Bass | Nemo

Drums | Elder

Guitar | Tedo

Synth | Djox

Didgeridoo - Dennis Baranic

Vocals | Nemo, Elder, Tedo, Djox
Vocals [Dreamy Lead & Backing Vocals] | Anna Rose Swinkels
Voice [Spoken Word on The Crust] | S G Collins
Voice [Spoken Word on Flooding Iguanas] |  Djox

Review:

The didgeridoo is entirely underutilized in the realm of doom. Such drone! That sound bedding down with the intense and Evil Dead-esque spoken word bit of the intro to ‘The Crust’ (courtesy of SG Collins) sets the tone for a lush and foreboding soup of post-whatever ambient sludge. 20+ minute songs that spread more into several movements rather than single pieces. These aren't slow despite what the length may imply. They have dynamics, at times even approaching athleticism. Dense and expansive by turns, crushing and enveloping, but lacks….something?!!.

If it feels at times as if you've heard it all before, a component of their sound is absolutely derivative of the pillars of the genre, the Isis/Neurosis/Cult of Luna’s. To their credit, however, there is a width(? is maybe the right word?) to their aura, a want to stretch -beyond- that seems counterpoint to some of the occasional obsessive introversion of many typical shoe gazing post-metal and sludge bands. Themes of hallucinatory ocean life, prehistoric drift and vastness, overtake and encompass the several shifts of feel and timbre of the music and hold together the strands of noise, ambient, drone, synth-powered electronics, and even the rare moments of straight up rock swirling around this 3 track 60 minute opus. The final five minutes of ‘The Crust’ would hold up well as a song on its own, shovelling up a load of grim subdued blasting before sliding into a healthy stomping doom riff with a miles-long fade-out into a unique, noisy, tribal twitch and glitch ending.

‘Nautilus/Artifact’ is a bit more succinct, starting off with an obligatory quiet opening before the post-metal riffing takes off, laying the groundwork for the "winding visions, affirmation, spiraling forth" from the lyrics. A grimy, murky audio experience set to a pushing, moving energy that propels it out of the dimly-lit basement and onto a wave tossed ship under slate-grey skies. The drumming on this tune is kinetic and grows increasingly so as it crashes into a climactic point where the heaviness drops off. We are left with a solitary emotive guitar and pressure-building synth waves building to a satisfactorily heavy outro. A moving watery lead makes the last minute the highlight of the album for me.

The final track, titled ‘Flooding Iguanas/Waters’ takes a long time to build up past the intro, and meanders through 7 minutes of mediocre tuneage before finally dropping the hammer and bashing out an ode to the Swans for a minute or so. "I don't want to be here" yelled repetitively until the undeniable height of their melodic grooving hits and disappears before you even get a chance to enjoy it! It quickly moves past into a tense noise-rock burst of weirdness that takes over and kills any hope of bobbing your head until out of nowhere a light hypnotic dirge suddenly brings the feeling back. Echoing the end of ‘Nautilus/Artifact’, an incredibly long fadeout to ambience leads to more minimalist art/space-rock moments. These last few minutes are a lovely wind-down from the spastic moments of the core of the song until resurgence grows, crashes, and returns to the wind-down.

This band has a wealth of ideas and execution, but too many pieces feel underwhelming when compared to the genius of other sections. A growing away from the overused tropes of the genres represented and into something more…alien, more massive. More trance-inducing…I think would really set these dudes apart from the crowd. So much potential. Bonus points for a totally slick website and the video to follow, a live recording of the band "narrating" Haxän with their music.

Words by: James Harris

Laws of Multiversal Gravitation is streaming and downloadable free on http://nauseahtake.bandcamp.com/ with an impressive bit of heavy vinyl for sale as well.

For more information:

http://nauseahtake.bandcamp.com/

http://nauseahtake.com/

https://www.facebook.com/nauseahtake