ASEITAS – EDEN TROUGH

(Andy Synn provides a preview, and a pre-review, of the new album from Aseitas, out May 30)

Let’s get one thing straight – I happen to think that Aseitas‘s second album, False Peace is… well, I’m not going to use the word “masterpiece”, because that word has been so over-used and bastardised it’s basically become worthless and/or meaningless these days (though I am still a fan of, very occasionally, using it in its original meaning)… but it’s definitely what I would call an unsung and underrated underground gem.

With a sound that runs the gamut from Artifical Brain to Zao (taking in influences from everyone from Gorguts to Godflesh, Car Bomb to Cattle Decapitation to Krallice along the way) it’s the sort of album which doesn’t fit neatly into any one box – being part Death, part ‘core, part Sludge, part Tech, and more besides – and established Aseitas as a band with the potential to find fans all over the musical map.

And now, after lying dormant for four long years, they’ve emerged from hibernation with a brand new album (set for release next week via Total Dissonance Worship), and a new mutation of their sound – but is their latest evolution full of hybrid vigour, or a genetic dead-end?

One thing you’ll probably notice right away when listening to Eden Trough – or, at least, once you’ve finished picking your teeth up off the floor after having them knocked out by the explosive opening bars of “Break the Neck of Every Beautiful Thing” – is that the band’s third album is less than half as long as their previous effort.

And while at first this might seem a little disappointing – like you, I was also kind of hoping for another absolutely mammoth endeavour in the vein of False Peace (even though, in hindsight, that album probably could have done with a bit of a trim) – it shouldn’t take long for you to realise that what Aseitas have done here (or, at least, what they’ve attempted to do) is refine and condense their sound into an even tighter and more explosive form.

The aforementioned “Break the Neck…” for example, is three-and-a-half minutes of squalling dissonance and grinding distortion, lurching anti-grooves and seething pseudo-melody – all topped off by a truly visceral (in the sense that you can feel it in your guts) vocal performance and propelled by a whirling dervish of frenzied percussion – that simultaneously belongs to all genres, and none, while “Libertine Captor” adds a touch of Obzen-era Meshuggah into an already overloaded mix, then a dash of Imperial Triumphant‘s moody madness on top of all this, but somehow still manages to achieve an unsettling and unorthodox equilibrium.

But just because these first two songs have concentrated the band’s sound into its most brutal (and brutally efficient) form doesn’t mean that they’ve abandoned their more outlandish ambitions.

Beginning with the unsettling, piano-based interlude “Null Adam/Null Eve”, the album’s back half – climaxing with the closing pairing of of ten-minute titan “Tiamat” (whose stunningly melodic second-half provides a captivating contrast to the rest of the record’s harsher and more chaotic vibe) and dynamic dynamo “Alabaster Bones” – sees the band giving full rein to their proggiest proclivities, pushing the album into full on Prog-Death territory akin to The Faceless and/or Extol at their very best.

So while Eden Trough may be an altogether leaner, meaner monstrosity than its gargantuan predecessor it’s still just as much of a monster… even if it’s one that perhaps hasn’t quite achieved its ultimate form just yet.