By: Josh McIntyre
Album
Type: Full Length
Date
Released: 23/04/2021
Label:
Southern Lord Recordings
“Vital” CD//DD//LP track listing:
1). Abating the Incarnation of Matter
2). Half Breed
3). Wited, Still and All…
4). Of This Ilk
5). Vital
The
Review:
Big|Brave creates music
that consumes the listener. Their exploration of soundscapes (rather than
notes) pulsing rhythms, and raw emotional vocals have captivated me since I
first saw them opening for Sunn
O))) back
in 2016. The band is less than a decade old yet here we are with their fifth
LP, “Vital”.
If we must give a genre description, I
find Big|Brave to be more at home in the
post-punk field than sludge metal, though they clearly cross paths in terms of
the heavy drones. Their sound is somewhere between the pulsing aggression of
early Swans and the creeping beauty of
Godspeed You! Black
Emperor. This has been consistent from the start but the band
continuously experiments with their foundation.
“Vita”l continues this trend and is another lively display of
what makes Big|Brave who they are. Huge,
pulsing sounds (they don’t play many ‘chords’ in the traditional sense)
followed by lingering trails of reverb are the standard. The use of negative
space is just as crucial. Each track builds, gradually and slowly, until they
dissipate. Of this Ilk, the fourth song, becomes one of the most aggressive of
the band’s career halfway through. It absolutely pulverizes and then fades away
like someone who has finished their point. It’s fairly comparable to an
expressionistic painting, one that uses abstractions to show the ambiguity of
simple existence.
These feelings are crucial here. Robin Wattie, our primary vocalist, sings and
yells while these soundscapes waver around. Her performances are powerful and
her lyrics, which regard her feelings and experiences being an ‘Other’ in a
society dominated by a complex web in which whiteness and maleness are seen as
standards (hence everything else is ‘Other’), put significant weight on “Vital”
as a piece of artistic expression. There is such a strong sense of existential
exploration on this record that one feels an obligation to listen again and to
read the lyrics again, this next time just a little closer.
Big|Brave don’t
just put out records that sound cool, even though they certainly do. Each one
feels like an extension of the people who made them. They remind us that music
is temporal and takes up space. It isn’t just about the notes that we play but
how we play them. Big|Brave can pound drums, punch
their guitars, scream, and devour us in waves of feedback before taking it all
away. We are as vulnerable to their will as they are to their own. We, as
people, are also both temporal and spacious. We are capable of being both
fragile and powerful. The songs in “Vital” wander about their
existence just as people similarly do. They speak of vulnerabilities,
marginalization, strength, and endurance. We learn when we listen to each
other.
“Vital”
is available HERE
