The title and lyrical themes of Tuscoma’s new album Gu-cci have little or nothing to do with the usual tropes of extreme metal. Anti-church tirades are missing, as are demonic invocations, troughs of gore, dank catacombs, the blaze of torches, or the brandishing of blades. They’re more poetic, more emotionally rooted, and never exactly spell things out.

Tuscoma‘s music on the new album is also itself unorthodox, bringing together elements from a range of genres, including black metal, post-metal, death metal, shoegaze, and hardcore. The results are monumentally heavy, powerfully turbulent, and emotionally fracturing. The songs become daunting, desolate, and deranged, coupled with rhythms that hit with concrete-splitting force. In other words, it’s not what you might expect from the album title or the lyrics.

Before elaborating on the sounds ourselves, we’ll begin by sharing a comment from Tuscoma bassist Craig Leahy: Continue reading »