(written by Islander)
We’re all about to roll into the weekend, and we hope it will be a good one for everybody. To help pave the way into it, and to make the weekend a better one for you, we’re premiering a song from Aspen Sanctum’s forthcoming debut album To Withhold the Need to Conquer.
Because this is a fairly new band, an introduction is in order. They are based in Kalamazoo, a town in southwestern Michigan that shares the Algonquian name for the river that runs by it. The band’s four members are Jared Koons, Jeremy Cronk, Tim Wicklund, and Bryan Neterer. Here’s their explanation for the band’s name, and for the title of their album:
Aspen forests are common to the upper Midwest. Known for their colorful autumn leaves and pale bark, the word “Aspen” serves as a reference to the region’s distinct seasons. “Sanctum” suggests a sacred, secluded space. Aspen Sanctum is meant to evoke a vision of the natural world prevailing in the face of time.
Embodying the beauty of the Northwoods, coastal Great Lakes, and rolling hills of the Midwest, while simultaneously resisting the innate human urge to dominate and conquer all that lies in view.
As for the stylistic bent of their music, Aspen Sanctum describe it as “[b]lending the intensity and atmosphere of black metal with melodic sensibility characteristic of Midwestern U.S. music, post-hardcore, and Americana”.
The song we’re bringing you today is “Pillars“. While the preceding quotations might lead you to expect pastoral or even placid music, the song is instead wrenching in its intensity. Without prelude, it delivers thundering bass upheavals, hammering percussion, torrential riffing, and scorching screams.
The guitars breathtakingly blaze, writhe, rise, and fall, simultaneously panoramic and distressing. The music also suddenly inflicts crashing bursts as well as blast-beat tirades, and the lead guitar pulsates, ejecting rapid swirls of sound that are vibrant and yet still seem distressed — or maybe that interpretation is influenced by the vocals, which remain shattering in their unhinged intensity.
Yet by the end there’s something about the sweep of the music, the searing flashes of the lead guitar, and its heart-pounding pulse, that make the music sound fierce and glorious.
To Withhold the Need to Conquer is the first release from Aspen Sanctum. It was recorded earlier this year, with engineering and mixing by Chris Frankhauser at Raygun Recording and mastering by Blake Bickle at Dynamic Sound Studios.
The album will be digitally released by the band on August 7th, and you can pre-order and pre-save it now. After the links, we also invite you to listen to the album’s previously released opening song, the magnificent “Without Illumination“.
That song is significantly longer than the song we’ve just premiered, and it shows more sides of Aspen Sanctum’s musical interests. In its changing phases it delivers near-overwhelming power and explosive emotional intensity on an expansive scale, but it also creates moods of sorrow, anguish, and gentle wistfulness.
It displays the band’s afore-mentioned elements of Americana, especially in the lead-guitar melodies and soloing. It flies very high and sees very far. Thoughts of Panopticon and Falls of Rauros come to mind, which is intended as very high praise.
DIGITAL PRE-ORDER:
https://aspensanctum.bandcamp.com/album/to-withhold-the-need-to-conquer
STREAMING PRE-SAVE:
https://too.fm/d1nnn2y
FOLLOW ASPEN SANCTUM:
https://www.instagram.com/aspensanctum
https://www.facebook.com/aspensanctum