Iapetus / Unsung 2024
Unholy trinity streamline their sonic truckin’ to reveal fine details of tuneful clang.
Ein Abdruck vom Messer im Herzen
One would assume that removing electronic cushions from a heavy-rock collective’s aural layout may make such an ensemble’s output more impenetrable, yet the subtraction of Bernhard Wöstheinrich’s keyboards from ANCHOR AND BURDEN’s sound palette conversely rendered the arrangements of the remaining trio – Touch guitarists Markus Reuter and Alexander Paul Dowerk and drummer Asaf Sirkis, calling themselves TONNEN VON HALL – immensely nuanced. Of course, accessing these subtleties requires piercing the faux-industrial surface of the combo’s debut album, but those brave enough to do so will be rewarded with an exquisitely intricate set of melodies, which, nevertheless, come interspersed with brief, about-a-minute, pieces that let the listener breathe. The twenty-one-track trip is not easy, no doubt about it, and still, this venture’s bound to warrant repeated spins, with the platter’s title – translated as “An Imprint Of The Knife In The Heart” – suggesting relentlessly dangerous rapture waiting at the close.
Only there’s no need to go as far to feel how emotional this record is, with almost brutal, non-brittle transparency of the finely-layered “Keiserlicht” merely one of its multitude of strangely arresting aspects that start sculpting the trinity’s psych-attack once serrated riffs of the ear-splitting “Erdmontel” cut up the silence and stop the musicians’ histrionically intimidating assault after the last strummed passages of “Herzkommer” get dissolved in nothingness. There’s a sense of wonder, of constant desire to be awestruck by what’s going on behind the thunderously magnetic, electrically crackling veneer of pieces like “Kanister” and “Kraken” where tempos shift in an almost danceable manner, Sirkis’ beats deliriously wandering amidst Dowerk and Reuter’s loosely, if intricately, interwoven licks – resilient and resonant at the same time. Still, the vocal scat and loops turn “Zivilisationsfolie” into something majestic, genuinely human, touching even, while the unrestrained “Rauschmitte” pitches fury and worry into the record’s ebb and flow before becoming truly triumphant, strings stinging and laying aural curlicues across the throbbing bottom end, and “Thronfolge” reaches for orchestral scope without losing an iota of heaviosity. However, “Ein Abdruck Vom Messer Im Herzen” locates sharp edges of glassy surfaces and gradually explores the risks of sliding on groove.
The new trio’s “Ein Abdruck vom Messer im Herzen” is a staggering experiment that seems to open gates to an entire series of sonic trips.
*****
