Through their first two releases, Australia’s Endless Loss opened the floodgates of words here that attempted to capture the exhilaration of being sonically destroyed and chilled to the bone.
We referred to their 24-minute 2016 debut demo, Solitary Starless Beast, as “a catastrophic demolition job”, with “dire and desolate melody slithering along through the maelstrom”. We characterized their 14-minute 2022 EP Bloodletting Narcotic Divination as “brutally bludgeoning and psychotically violent stuff, but also hallucinatory and esoteric”.
We spilled out a lot more words, but you probably get the point. This Adelaide duo’s amalgam of black and death metal was violently ruinous enough to appeal increasingly to fans of bestial war metal, but also displayed a kind of fiendish intelligence and ingenuity that gave the music more dimensions than unmitigated bombardment and evisceration.
And so, while the prospect of an Endless Loss debut album created the thrills that come to some of us when anticipating a slaughter-fest, it also created curiosity. Would Endloss Loss continue opening other dimensions through their music, and how effectively would they do that?
We and you have our answer today, because we’re presenting a full stream of that album — entitled Traversing the Mephitic Artery — in advance of its March 25th release by Nuclear Winter Records.
On this record (as always) Endless Loss don’t waste time. At roughly 28 minutes, its length may cause quibbling about whether it should be called an album, and there’s only one track out of 9 that reaches (and exceeds) the four-minute mark. Given the strategies that Endless Loss pursue, however, these are not bad things.
One fundamental strategy (again) is to make war on listeners, to discharge fury through brutally hammering drums, immense low-frequency undulations, dense waves of searing and skull-scouring abrasion, and a cavalcade of horrid roars and blinding screams.
But there are other strategies at work in the album, and indeed the opening of other dimensions, horrid dimensions populated by monstrosities fed by terror. That becomes evident in the brief first track, “Oppugned Sentience”, where ghastly voices wail their chants in eerily ringing catacombs behind primitive, pounding timpani and crashing cymbals, a deliberate way of announcing, just like the wraiths that proceed through ruins in the album’s cover art, that death is present here in more ways than in visions of unmitigated devastation.
Death is also present in grisly, sizzling riffs that burrow like giant feeding worms or seem to writhe in hopeless agony, in the whir of fire-bright guitars that scream in hideous exultation or wail like spirits endlessly lost; and in pick-slides that scrape the mind, and moaning reverberations most foul.
These changing facets of the music are part of what transfixes attention, but another key ingredient are the variations in the drumming, which does more than shift the tempos (which it does relentlessly). Sometimes the drums blast like weapons or hammer like pistons; sometimes they deliberately lead a gallows march; sometimes they tumble like boulders in an avalanche; and sometimes they boom in gargantuan tones, like bunker-busting detonations.
To be sure, this is ugly, hateful music — hideously so — and the vocals are hair-raising in their venomous and voracious intensity. There’s no reason to extend the ruination of these tracks beyond their relatively compact lengths, and the band include many changing facets in the times they’ve set for themselves. These tracks will keep listeners on the edge of their seats.
So you see, verbal floodgates opened again… but now we’ll close them and let you experience the music for yourselves. After the music player, you’ll find some words from the band too.
From the band:
“Traversing the Mephitic Artery was recorded live in complete takes to fully harness the unrelenting energy. Extra guitars were then layered on top for tonal expansion. We perform live exclusively as a two-piece, through an array of amplifier stacks with vocals drenched in reverb and delay. The record represents a similar experience to the live performance but with added embellishments: poisonous whisperings, haunted war chants and brandished guitar leads.
“Thematically the album deals with death, hedonism, belligerence and triumph of war – through ancient, metaphysical and necromantic depredation.”
Nuclear Winter will release Traversing the Mephitic Artery in a digisleeve CD edition limited to 400 hand-numbered copies, on cassette tape format, and digitally. They recommend it for fans of Profanatica, Teitanblood, Triumvir Foul, and Demoncy.
NUCLEAR WINTER:
https://nuclearwinterrecords.bandcamp.com/album/traversing-the-mephitic-artery
https://nuclearwinterrecords.com/shop/
ENDLESS LOSS:
https://endlessloss.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/endlesslossau
https://www.instagram.com/endlessloss/
