(Andy Synn encourages those of you who want a little more chaos in their lives to check out the new album from Noise Trail Immersion, set for release this Friday on I, Voidhanger Records)
I feel like I’ve been covering quite a few big – or, at least, well-known (in Metal circles at least) – bands recently, so perhaps it’s about time to switch my/our attention to a group who are a little less (in)famous?
That doesn’t mean that Noise Trail Immersion don’t already have a reputation to uphold with Tutta La Morte In Un Solo Punto, their upcoming fifth album – in fact, we’ve probably played a small role in helping raise their profile over the years – but for the wider community, including some of our readers I’m sure, this could well be their first time encountering the Italian quintet.
And what will they encounter? Nine tracks of swarming, swirling, switch-blade sharp Dissonant Black Math Metal whose main purpose seems to be to repeatedly punish and perforate your eardrums over the course of forty-three furious minutes.
Interestingly enough, even on my first listen to Tutta La Morte In Un Solo Punto, it quickly became clear that the band had chosen not to continue down the same path that had opened up before them after 2021’s Curia, which found them adding more space and calm and contrast to their sound without sacrificing their signature brand of barely controlled chaos.
In fact, if anything, Noise Trail Immersion‘s fifth album finds them whiplashing wildly back in the opposite direction – for every action a reaction, right? – producing one of the darkest, densest, and most destructively discordant albums of their career thus far (and that’s saying something).
That sense of purpose and control remains however, especially during the opening triptych of “Divampa l’Ignoto”, “Spire di Sangue”, and “Arde e Respira” which all flow into one another – the end of each preceding track seamlessly introducing and flowing into the opening bars of the next – in a tumultuous torrent of anxiety-inducing aggression, nerve-scraping dissonance and lurching, sludge-injected anti-grooves.
And while comparisons with the likes of Wake and Dodecahedron still hold true – especially when the band allow a touch of sinister pseudo-melody or bleak, brooding atmosphere to seize the spotlight (as they do during “Lo Spettacolo” or “Sogno A Sé Stante”) – much of of Tutta La Morte… finds the band embracing an even more “blackened” approach (the abrasive, acid-drenched “Culla e Bara” being a prime example) equally reminiscent of Serpent Column and Plebeian Grandstand (and perhaps even Krallice at their most extreme).
Through it all, however, Noise Trail Immersion continue to refine an define their own distinctively venomous, thrillingly visceral voice, with the harsh angles and hypnotic hooks and frantic, feverish intensity of songs such as “Finizione” and “Precipizio Consapevole” somehow managing to worm their way under your skin even as they’re doing their very best to strip every last scrap of flesh from your bones.
True, it definitely won’t be for everyone – too complex and ‘core-ish for the “true” Black Metal legions, too gnarled and blackened for the Mathcore masses – and it occasionally oversteps itself in its zeal to be as unconventional and unpredictable as possible (the climactic, almost Krallice-esque title track, for example, clearly reaches its natural end just before the five minute mark only to then jerk back to life in a way that, to my ears at least, feels a little forced), but few albums this year are likely to push your limits like this one.