My original idea for this post has morphed a bit as I’ve discovered more music, but the core of the idea is the same. Although the music here is radically different in the most obvious of ways, all of it seems connected to me, in the sense that all of it effectively severed my usual currents of thought from their moorings and turned them in different, and bewildering, directions. The last of these songs isn’t metal at all, in the way we usually think about heavy music, but it’s just as mentally unmooring as the other tracks.

At times like these, it occurs to me again that music which knocks you off-balance, which shoves you outside your normal comfort zones, can sometimes be the most fascinating.

THOREN

Roughly two years ago our friend and former NCS contributor Austin Weber presented our premiere of an album named Brenneburg by an instrumental trio from Michigan who call themselves Thoren. In attempting to capture the sensations of the music, Austin made frequent references to Dysrhythmia, while observing that Thoren “seem to be coming from an even more alien and discordant place than the off-the-wall realm where Dysrhythmia comfortably reside”. Continue reading »