(Andy Synn highlights two surprise releases from last week)
Don’t you just love surprises?
Well, the good kind anyway… you know, like the unexpected return of a musical project you thought was gone for good, or another new album from a band who already produced one of your favourites of the year?
Because that’s exactly what we’re looking at (and listening to) today.
SERPENT COLUMN – TASSEL OF ARES
Quite why Serpent Column decided to hang up their boots back in 2021 – shifting focus instead to releases under the Theophonos banner – is still a mystery to me, as is what exactly led to their sudden return last week.
But, let’s face it, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (unless it’s been wheeled up to my front door by a bunch of shifty looking Greeks) so let’s just celebrate the fact Tassel of Ares exists and see what delights it has in store, shall we?
Compared to the last time we heard from them, the Serpent Column of 2024 is something of a different beast (or, at least, in a different creative headspace) than they were during the creation of 2021’s Katarsis, with the overall sound and approach of their latest album – which kicks off with the electrifying riffs, keening melodies, and grimly infectious grooves of “Reclaiming Decades Erased” – erring closer to that of their earlier works such as Ornuthi Thalassa and Invicta with its focus on longer, more intricate song-structures and a greater sense of dynamic depth.
It’s not a pure throwback, however, as there’s an even more bleak and brooding vibe to the music this time around, one that fits perfectly with the more expansive, slow-burning approach of the record’s twin centrepieces, “Unto Works and Days” and “The Long War of Essential Struggle”, which spend almost as much time on morose introspection as they do on morbid aggression.
The latter track in particular – the longest of the band’s career by a significant margin – is a complex, contorted labyrinth of tangled riffs and tortured leads, underpinned by some impressively intricate, constantly shapeshifting drumming and overlain with a ghostly aura of doom ‘n’ gloom, which takes the listener on a demanding, yet rewarding, journey of both cerebral thrills and cathartic chills that builds to a sonically dense, and emotionally intense, climax… after which the mournful denouement of “In Death I Will Remember the Colour of Her Irises” provides a suitably sombre finale for what is easily the most melancholy Serpent Column release yet.
UNDERNEATH – IT EXISTS BETWEEN US
Now this was a surprise for a couple of reasons – not only was I shocked to to see Underneath return with a new album after already releasing one of my favourite records of the year (From the Gut of Gaia) back in January, but I was doubly-surprised to learn that they’d also removed that album (along with the preceding EP) entirely from their Bandcamp page, which now hosts only their new release, It Exists Between Us.
Why exactly they seem to have drawn a line and disavowed their previous work(s) I don’t know – though I’ve heard, second-hand, that they’ve had some line-up changes since the release of …Gaia, and as such decided to make a fresh start with a slightly refreshed sound (although still keeping the same name?) – but here we are, with a new album to check out… and a whole lot of unanswered questions.
Thankfully the sinister synths and savage auditory assault of “Absurdist” and the relentless, in-your-face aggression of early highlight “The Mountain” immediately hit you with such ferocious force – reminding me, in some ways, of Full of Hell at their most bare-bones and brutal – that such questions will quickly be forgotten (or, at least, put to one side for a while) in the face of such overwhelming, unforgiving fury.
That’s not to say they’ve completely abandoned who they used to be – some of my favourite tracks on this particular album, such as “Habsburg Jaw” and “Finishing Reconstruction”, still possess much of that same indignant intensity and iron-clad weight as the best, and most brutish, cuts from their previous record – it’s just that whereas From the Gut of Gaia fell more on the Hardcore-meets-Death Metal side of things, It Exists Between Us is more thoroughly steeped in the grit and gristle of Grindcore.
It’s a relatively subtle shift – and about the only “subtle” thing about this album – as previous songs such as “I Will Drown the Earth” and “Optimizing Bodies” were already blurring the lines between Death, Grind, and Hardcore, but still one that shouldn’t be dismissed, since it makes for a leaner, meaner (and, on killer cuts like “Alabaster Yellow” and “A Gun the Size of a Building”, distinctly grindier) version of the band we know and love.
Do I like it as much as its now-vanished predecessor? Not quite – though that’s more an issue of personal preference than objective quality – but I will say that the climactic pairing of “It Exists Between Us” and “It Dies Within Us” (which recall the heaviest, darkest moments of their early works) collectively comprise seven of my favourite minutes of the year so far.