How do you begin a three song, 30 minute EP full of yells, growls and loud sounding strings weaving guitar notes and patterns like multi-level geometric spider webs and start with music you’d expect to hear in the elevator? Get ready to hear some treacherously sexy sax in the first few minutes of the unique garden of sounds called Breach|Submerge. The sax may put the listener accustomed to head-banging in a very different mood, doing weird things to thought patterns, lulling listeners into a ‘very’ false since of relaxation for what lurks a few minutes away. David Sais, Daniel Pouliot, Trae Malone, Swansong, Benigno Esaú and Stephen Charouhas have created a unique release of musical combinations and camaraderie that, honestly, shouldn’t go together, let alone be on the same disk. Though the two worlds are melded together and seem to co-exist like strange stage fellows.
Musically speaking Cetacean may have figured out what the Garden of Eden sounded like in the disks opening minutes. Spending the majority of the rest on Opeth length tunes, playing the aftermath when the sky darkened, the apple hit the ground with chunks missing and the expulsion began.
Opposites attract on Breach|Submerge, like black and death metal on the swing set, while folk music plays in the sandbox and the opening jazz solo climbs up the slide, enjoying its one ride down, all on the same playground. It’s a submersion of sounds, with sudden, jarring breaks you don’t see or hear coming.
“Earth is a Whisper” begins under the hazy spotlight of the jazz scene with folky, prog playing in the next room. Like Pink Floyd and Opeth were jamming and some death, sludge-core came blaring on the jukebox. Guitars simply smashing the calm good vibes and soothing soundscapes away like a stained glass shot glass thrown down a bar, bleeding a broken, shattered red.
The label ‘progressive blackened metal’ doesn’t begin to cover what’s going on here. How many metal bands have picked up, played or used a woodwind instrument on record and five minutes later are screaming and growling in death, black metal style with guitars beating down the earth?
“Relationships Deteriorate,” the second 10 minute test of endurance, with an odd Opeth-like quality with throaty chanting, like monks doing some uncomfortable penances. The guitars are turned on early this time, playing tag with quiet distilled calming atmosphere. It’s a bizarre, cluster sludge of guitar noise that plays like strangely organized ingenuity.
“Outpour I, II, III” stretches out the longest at 14 minutes with no rest for the ears. Swansong yells and growls like he’s trapped in a room with death trying to find a way in. They allow for a few minutes of relaxation five minutes in then flip the switch at nine playing the on, off game with bits of prog seeping into the strangling guitars. Its Crowbar meets Hatebreed with melody peeking in, slowly mixing into the fuming cauldron of mystery.
Breach|Submerge will be released on wax May 27 and is currently available on CD and download.
Courtesy of Dewar PR
