Descent has been out a while. Since September 2014 so I can only guess that this is a re-release. Bloody good thing to as it gives this Polish quintet a second crack of the whip, which they thoroughly deserve.
Descent is 8 tracks of sludgy post metal oozing with melody and layered like a metal trifle. This is the band’s debut long player and they have evidently poured their hearts and blackened souls into it. There are all the ethereal elements that one would expect with anything carrying the post pre-fix. These are countered by stark bludgeoning riffs which bring to mind industrial heavyweights Godflesh.
Opener “Sunset Growing Old” mixes acoustic passages, clean singing and breathless, delicate as a butterfly’s wing melodies, with aggressive riffing and growled vocals to great effect. The ending is so abrupt it made me jump! “Repulsive” breaks out the Broadrick riffs and gives some real meat to the sound. This track is anything but repulsive.
“Lit” has more than a hint of Amon Amarth about it due to the vocal line, which is no bad thing but any horned hat stylings is crushed by proggy atmospheres and a delicious shoegaze guitar sound towards the rear of the track.
Zero has been my fave since the CD dropped through my letterbox. A gothic behemoth striding across a desolate wasteland in a leather duster. I keep expecting Carl McCoy to appear through the dust as he did in Hardware. There are elements of Voivod and Amebix in there too with astronomical riffs firing amongst sludge sodden baselines.
“Lost in the Noise” that follows has its work cut out but it hits the mark. A riff Iommi would be proud of is injected amongst a progtastic melody and the dual clean/growled vocals are utilised again to add extra textures to the proceedings. The title is apt, as when the track builds there is little else you can do than follow its instruction.
“Ion” offers 2 minutes of respite as an acoustic guitar floats in space leading straight into “……Mills” and the riff kicks in.
The albums closer turns the doom up a notch and is reminiscent of My Dying Bride in their more pensive moments. The sheen of the space race is scraped away to reveal a rotting, shrouded cadaver with a shit eating grin.
To describe this album as Post metal or Sludge, post rock or Prog does it a disservice. Labels and pigeonholes often put off todays listener who wants to get to something they like FAST! Give Descent a whirl . IF you love metal, prog, death, doom, sludge, industrial, goth, shoegaze you will find something to quench your aural thirst.
(8/10 Matt Mason)
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