(Andy Synn highlights one of his favourite new discoveries of the year)
One thing I’m sure you’ll notice, if you spend any amount of time online, is how often people complain that “there’s no good new music any more“.
They’re wrong, of course, but it occurs to me that there’s a cruel (and dispiriting) irony to the fact that the proliferation of streaming services, which should – in theory ay least- grant their users access to a seemingly endless and almost infinitely varied array of new artists and albums, has ultimately, through the use of increasingly solipsistic and artificially-unintelligent algorithms, ended up stifling a lot of peoples’ ability, or willingness, to actively go out and look for new music themselves.
If you’re reading this, however – congratulations, you’re probably not one of those people.
And your reward for that is that you get to listen to the disgustingly doomy, dissonance-drenched Death-Sludge of Canada’s Mind Mold and their new album, Erosive.
Make no mistake, this is one seriously dark, suffocatingly dense, slab of absolute auditory nihilism – albeit one laced with threads of bleak beauty, like veins through marble – which attempts, over the course of just under thirty-five thunderous minutes, to crush and grind all the last vestiges of hope and joy from your body.
Oppressive opener “Kiln”, for example, wastes no time in getting to work, its massive, morbidly heavy guitars and grim, guttural growls quickly achieving the sort of monstrous resonance that threatens to turn your bones to dust, while the gargantuan, gut-rumbling bass-lines and eerie, piercing anti-melodies of the title track simultaneously wage war upon your nervous system from diametrically opposed directions.
Even at this early stage though – and this will become even more apparent as the album progresses – it’s obvious there’s more going on here than initially meets the eye (or ear), with subsequent re-listens to both the opening pair and the ominous, yet oddly haunting, “Surrogate” certain to reveal even more atmospheric depth and subtle interplay between dissonance and melody with each new spin.
Because of this Erosive is that rare album which is both intensely visceral and intriguingly cerebral, with the heaving, hypnotic dirge of “Sisyphus”, for example, combining both monstrous metallic weight and mesmerising ambient moodscapes into something you can feel both deep in your gut and at the base of your brain, while the unexpectedly melodic (yet absolutely crushing) “Maddening” and increasingly claustrophobic closer “Hill” serve to further demonstrate how many layers there are to the band’s particular brand of existential extremity.
It’s an immensely impressive (and impressively immense) debut, that’s for sure – both for the devastating power of its initial impact and for it’s ability to seemingly get better, and deeper, with each and every play – and one that’s likely to rank very highly in my Personal Top Ten come the end of the year.