Twelve years into their career, the Swedish genre-benders in Moloken, who hail from the cold climes of Umeå in the north, have completed their fourth album, Unveilance of Dark Matter. It represents the band’s most adventurous, most thrilling, and quite possibly their most unnerving, work yet. Attempting to pin down the style of the music is like trying to pin mercury to a wall. It constantly escapes any such futile efforts, and is all the better for it.

One might try to make a list of the ingredients — which range from modern hardcore to progressive rock, from sludge to post-metal, from doom and death to black metal (and funk) — but a mere list isn’t very elucidating as to how the band have interwoven such disparate traditions. You really have to just hear the album, and to marvel at all the surprising twists and turns, as long as you understand that Moloken are going to constantly challenge you, and to dismember any sense of comfort and self-satisfaction you might be feeling before you begin.

Wiser minds might just stop there and let you experience the full stream of the album we’re presenting on the eve of its release by The Sign Records, but of course no one will ever accuse us of being very wise, and so we’ll yield to the near-irresistible temptation to comment, in detail, on how these 11 ambitious tracks strike us. Continue reading »