A. White has been making audio sensations (purists would object to calling all of it “music”) for more than 25 years, through a variety of projects. Most recently he has become known for his work in Vessel of Iniquity and Crown of Ascension (we premiered the latter’s debut EP earlier this month), but the longest-running project has been Uncertainty Principle, which has amassed a catalogue of 16 albums that date back to 1999, and a handful of shorter releases. Now a 17th full-length is on the way.
This new album, aptly named Sonic Terror, is a survey of Uncertainty Principle‘s entire career — not a compilation, mind you, but a re-recording of songs that has involved a process of deconstruction and rebuilding, with an updated and improved sound and an adjustment in the way the sonic ingredients work together. As described by Xenoglossy Productions, which will release Sonic Terror on February 5th, the album “focuses on some of the heaviest doom metal you will ever hear, mixing harsh noise, funeral doom, sludge and drone, like an extreme hybrid between Godflesh and the Australian doom band Halo“. Judging from the song we’re premiering today from Sonic Terror, that’s not an exaggeration.
“The Golden Path” greets the ears with a miasma of sizzling, threatening, reverberating tones and titanic pounding percussion. The dissonance of the shrill sounds is unnerving (one might imagine the screaming of massed wraiths) and the impact of the echoing detonations is skull-fracturing. The boiling of that shrill riffing reaches a fever pitch of derangement… and then it all fades away… replaced by misty ambient tones and lonesome notes.
But the gargantuan drum blows and growling bass tones return, loosening the fillings in your teeth and putting a crushing pressure on your chest. Those shining, searing swarms of sound rise again too, sending shivers down the spine and through the mind, reaching a maelstrom crescendo in which monstrous roars join in the apocalyptic sonic storm as the megaton rhythms bend your neck to their will. The refrains will not only move your head, but may also tend to induce a trance — a death trance.
Xenoglossy Productions will release Sonic Terror in a limited digipack CD edition as well as digitally, and it’s available for pre-order now:
PRE-ORDER:
https://xenoglossyproductions.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-terror
FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/UncertaintyP