Labels: Relapse
Review by: Alex Deller
Expertly-constructed, genre-straddling doom is the order of the day here, and while I can admire its scope and restless wanderings there’s something holding me back from wholeheartedly raving about it. After some ambient wibble things grind into crow-caw and riff-wall territory that’s reminiscent of the first Unearthly Trance record. This is pretty much USNEA’s fall-back position, and for all the trundles down the garden path (windswept Neurosis moments; bouts of Atriarchal gloom; some occasional black metal gallivanting…) you can be pretty certain that they’ll swagger back to mire-dwelling doom bludgeon before too long. The four lengthy songs take their time to expand and evolve, ideas and themes developing as funereal guitar leads twine and vast fissures open beneath your very feet. Still, though, there’s something holding me back from saying this is as killer a release as it could and should be, and it’s seriously doing my head in. Maybe it’s the simple fact that whenever I scroll through the stuff on my MP3 player I think I’ve somehow misspelled Unsane, but that seems too petty even for me. I guess I’ll have to just keep listening in order to figure it out. Wish me luck, and if I don’t return within a week then tell my family I love them…