(Andy Synn encourages you to really immerse yourselves in the crushing depths of Carrion)
It’s a familiar enough refrain by now that, due to the vast amount of new music released each week/month/year, we seem to spend a lot of our time just playing catch-up here at NCS.
That being said, we do still try and sneak in a few advance reviews whenever possible… although in this particular case our best laid plans were scuppered by the fact that the band’s new album ended up being released early this last weekend.
It doesn’t really matter all that much, however – after all, it’s sometimes better to be fashionably late to the party, right?
While Aortes (previously operating under the moniker Autism) have never hidden the fact that they’re part of a sonic lineage whose blueprint was first laid down, and then expanded upon, by the likes of Neurosis, Isis, Cult of Luna, and Amenra (with the influence of the latter being particularly prominent) Carrion firmly establishes them as an altogether darker, more nerve-wracking take on the style than most of their peers.
There is both an howling, feverish energy and a haunting sense of anxiety to the album’s title-track, for example, with its tightly-wound coils of discordant distortion and ominous sense of roiling, rumbling momentum eventually giving way to a desolate, almost Aronofsky-esque, synth-drenched soundscape which pulls the rug out from under the listener with aplomb, leaving them all the more vulnerable to the song’s cacophonous climax.
Similarly, the contrast between the crushingly claustrophobic riffage – all harsh angles and jagged edges – which propels “To The Worms” and its eerie sense of anti-melodic ambience makes for an equally difficult, but disturbingly infectious, listening experience, while the almost overwhelming heaviness of “When We Cease” (which features some of the most gargantuan guitar work – almost making LLNN look like lightweights in comparison – I’ve heard all year) and the suffocating, blackened bitterness of “Lifeless” (which could give absolutely anything on the latest album from This Gift Is A Curse a run for its money) further showcase how devastatingly dense, both in terms of oppressive atmosphere and abrasive, aggressive noise, this album can be.
The only downside of setting such a high bar of course is that those occasional moments which don’t reach the same heights – out of all the songs opener “Dying World” is probably the most conventional/predictable number, and thus arguably the weakest track on the album – stand out in even starker contrast, so in that sense Carrion is, at its worst, a victim of its own success.
At its best, however – as epitomised by the seething pressure cooker of sound and fury that is closer “I’ve Loved You All” – Carrion is an absolutely breathtaking, borderline asphyxiating, slab of raw, wounded emotion and raging, auditory intensity which is as uncomfortable as it is irresistible.