Feature / Music
Scene Point Blank's Favorites: The Year So Far (July 2024)

Aaron Turner, Brian Cook, and Nick Yacyshyn still chase the free rock dragon. With their feet firmly planted on the sludge and post-metal domain, the experimentations that started with the Keiji Haino collaborations are further developed in The Healer. The result is the most coherent manifestation of this joining of forces, where the sludge weight delivers the brutality and the improvisational playing breaks the norm. Just when you think Sumac have reached the summit with 2020’s May You Be Held, they show you there is still a lot of mountain left to climb.

Lussuria’s works have always been defined by their intricate construction, and Under Crumbled Stairs is no different. Here, Jim Mroz descends once more into the darkness of the human mind to unearth something terrifying. The main guide is the dark ambient lineage, but Mroz further expands the scope. The scenery is augmented via musique concrete methodologies, where samples and fragments of reality add depth. The electronic backbone is strengthened through the usual industrial applications, but dark techno motifs also arise from the shadows. But, it is Lussuria’s restrained approach that clinches this work. It is an ability to produce something challenging while retaining a minimal point of view.

Apart from the obvious, this being the collaboration between two legends of the broader electronic sphere, Extinct displays a transformative process. Not so much on the side of the audience, but on the side of the creators. The interaction between Merzbow’s noise and Meat Beat Manifesto’s IDM is not static, it deeply affects the two creators. As the two long-form compositions unfold one entity devours the other, spits it back out but it is no longer the same. The beats of MBM carry the power electronics of Merzbow, and through the latter’s noise applications, a decapitated rhythmic structure is born. It makes Extinct a unique and transformative release on both artists’ stellar discographies.

The Spectre has departed (at least for a moment) the Old Tower and is now roaming in the black metal fields of Fir. The project’s debut, De Stilte van God is a return to the ‘90s Scandinavian scene and its grim demeanor. The fury of “Morgenster” is bright and intense, while the sorrow of “Laatste Licht” runs deep. Still, the shadow of the Old Tower looms over De Stilte van God, and Fir traverse the dark ambient space, but they never lose sight of their lunar black metal.

Sure, crushing riffs and unearthly vocals are always cool. But, on their own, they are not enough. For Spectral Voice this fact was always obvious, and it resulted in one of the best death/doom records of the past decade in Eroding Corridors of Undoing. Now, they surpass their previous feat with a deeply disturbing and astute work in Sparagmos. Much like its namesake, the listening experience is excruciating. It feels like slowly being ripped apart by the droning melodies, the endless echoes, the harrowing psychedelic tinges, and the dark ambient spaces. It is final and inescapable.