Albums That Will #$@&%*! Your Face Off in 2014: Inanimate Existence, An Endless Cycle of Atonement
Inanimate Existence
An Endless Cycle of Atonement (Unique Leader Records)
Release Date – late winter/early spring 2014
My predictions for these things seem to be as accurate as a late ’90s GPS unit: not a single one of my picks so far has managed to keep me impressed by the end of the year. Iskald’s third album was slushy compared to the razor-keen permafrost of their previous two; Hypno5e’s excellent riffage was diluted by excessive sampling and exhausting song lengths; The Monolith Deathcult’s Tetragrammaton wasn’t up to the caliber Trivmvirate’s exuberant insanity.
But I promise, this year will be different! If you’ve been paying attention to the rampant burgeoning of the California brutal-death and tech-death scenes, you’ll know that their growth owes no small debt to Unique Leader Records. The label hosts more California-styled brutality per square inch than the Gulag, from the interstellar whirlwind of Fallujah to the thoughtful cogitation of Arkaik and Inherit Disease’s indignant stagger, not to mention newer artists and genre stalwarts. Santa Cruz’s Inanimate Existence, whose lineup boasts members of Son of Aurelius and Brain Drill, join the newer end of the spectrum. Their punishing debut Liberation Through Hearing dropped in 2012, but was regrettably overlooked. If the album had reached the proper audience, there’s no question that it would have been a milestone: its eerie, psychedelic themes are richly animated by the grandiose contrast between shamanic atmosphere and uncompromising brutality. Divided into a massive 16 tracks, the first half of the album plows mercilessly through lacerating technicality while the second navigates a labyrinth of mystical introspection.
Not noodles, but artisan-grade pasta
Judging from a pre-production mix of “The Rune of Destruction,” the first released track off An Endless Cycle of Atonement, their music is approaching more unified, melodic composition, eschewing Liberation Through Hearing’s rather strict partition between clean-tone and distorted-tone sections. If this is a poor quality production, I can’t wait to hear the polished album mix; the guitar tone and drums sound tight as hell and only the keyboards are a little thin. I’ve come across plenty of hate for the “djent” tone cropping up all across metal subgenres, but I’m personally a fan of the heavily processed, digital distortion timbre. It’s got a punishing range of frequencies that simply tears through the mix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gX_DUcMNmo
I’m loving the focus on Buddhist and Eastern themes – as Gorguts showed us last year, this kind of stuff makes for phenomenal death metal subject material, and allows for a tight relationship between abstract themes and unconventional, experimental musical elements. Plus, it’s got haunting female clean vocals and a guest bass flute performance (seriously, when else have you heard a bass flute in death metal?). What more could you want? Inanimate Existence have some stiff competition this year, but I’m expecting An Endless Cycle of Atonement to make an endless cycle of repetitions on my stereo as soon as it drops.
