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| Artwork by Elijah Tamu. |
The best music takes you somewhere. Whether it’s a windswept fjord on a pitch black winter night, a glorious battle for the future of the human race deep within the heart of space, or even deep within yourself as you come face to face with personal traumas that drove you to a life filled with depression and anxiety – great music takes you there and provides the backdrop for your imagination and emotions to run wild. For me personally, no matter what mood I am in, I can throw on a personal favorite and immediately be transported not just to another place, but a completely different emotional state. Sadly, as much as I love the genre, blackened death metal often provides the journey, but lacks the emotional resonance that I crave in music. Enter black/death/doom/ambient UK crew Abyssal with their fourth album in as many years to flip my expectations for the genre on its head and set a new benchmark for emotional impact in this dark artform.
If you are unfamiliar with the band and are wondering what to expect, the band name should clue you in – this is a trip to the heart of darkness, an endless descent into the void. Building upon a base of cavernous, chaotic blackened death metal (similar to Aussie nutcases like Impetuous Ritual or Portal) and injecting elements of funeral doom and dark ambient, Abyssal propels the genre forward with a unique and compelling sound. Album opener ‘Dialogue’ sets the tone for the next hour, opening with a few seconds of ominous ambience before sending the listener careening into a maelstrom of vicious blasts and crushing, trem-picked madness, from which a dissonant and unsettling riff rises to the fore, all against a backdrop of colossal, inhumanely deep funeral doom styled bellows. While the core components will be familiar to most listeners versed in extreme music, the way in which Abyssal commands them and weaves them together is both methodical and compelling. Throughout the track--hell the whole album--there is an unsettling feeling as your mind and emotions are taken over by some diabolical, omnipotent force.
The minds behind Abyssal have harnessed the void itself and used it to create a sonic black hole that drives the listener on an inescapable journey that scars the listener’s mind, in the best way possible. While it’s possible to break down the album track by track, I would be doing the band a disservice, as this is one cohesive piece and should be experienced as such. Heard individually, tracks can be enjoyable, but heard in the context and flow of the album, their true impact reveal themselves. While this makes for a demanding and emotionally draining experience, each subsequent exposure reveals new secrets and insights into the artist's vision, making repeat listens not just compelling, but essential.
I also have to note the excellent pacing and production choices the band have made. While it is very easy for this type of music to become monotonous due to the sheer relentlessness of sound, Abyssal wisely integrates dark ambient and doom into more traditional blast fests to create a constantly shifting landscape of sound. There is a real flow to this monster that keeps the listener engaged without ever allowing their mind to drift away from the journey. The production provides just enough space in the blasting sections to make Abyssal’s colossal riffs stand out and differentiate themselves from movement to movement and song to song. While A Beacon in the Husk is by no means an easy listen, it offers boundless rewards to those willing to give themselves over to the void.