So I’m meant to be finishing off a review of an album but right now I’m just trying to warm up. Well, I’m procrastinating but I’m listening to the album as I write this, so that’s some sort of progress into the finishing off the review.

Still riding the wave of productivity and hoping it takes me somewhere else, or something, but right now I’m listening to waves of cold guitar cutting through some sort of veil of… fog? I don’t know, but I know that this music is heavy, or considered heavy.

I think when some people hear metal they focus on the metal bit and don’t listen to the music itself. To be fair, that could be said about a lot of different forms of music. There’s so much out there that you might enjoy but you need to spend time listening to it and understanding it and hearing what is going on to get there, and sometimes that is easier and sometimes that is harder and all that other stuff, but you get the idea.

So I’m listening to this album I need to finish the review for and it’s going through this great passage of seeming atonality, and it’s dramatic and furious, but it’s creating this thick atmosphere that spreads out and sheds in chunks as the music keeps on charging forward, and it’s a harsh piece but it’s not an assault, if that makes sense. It’s probably the most linear piece in this album as there’s a fair bit of variation and familiarity throughout, but this one remains firmly itself until near the end when it starts transforming into something else whilst still remaining completely familiar. It’s an odd one in a way.

After this the songs will vary even more but everything remains familiar and resolute in its focus in terms of flow and progression, and it will remain interesting throughout the whole way. Some parts are more extreme than others and it works that way. It works with shifts and variation and it works with its heaviness. This isn’t just a metal album; that’s the most obvious label, but it’s doing so much and it’s changing and it has depth and tone and texture, and it’s dynamic.

It’s music with a rich history and it keeps looking forward. There’s confidence in change and there’s confidence in pushing outward as this group knows what does and does not work, and they know how to hold something for a long time without making it feel dull or boring. Everything is the right length and you get the idea.

Sometimes I wonder if music needs to change completely or if it is fine the way it is. It could be a good idea to tear everything down and start again, but there’s so much that we’d lose and there is so much change going on. Starting again wouldn’t necessarily change much of anything, but maybe we need to change how we approach and interact with music.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 08:44:32

I think there’s some good thinking in this, but I also think what I wrote is quite lacking.
Maybe I’ll expand upon this some time in the future.

Written at home.