Listen: Stoic Dissention And The New Difficult

Think of the ease with which you can go without crisp, virtuosic prog metal during the months when your soul cries out for scum black metal. Or your aversion to long-song exploration when your vibe is monosyllables and power chords. Your mood calls the shots. It’s kinda literally a no-brainer.

But then you encounter a band like Stoic Dissention and their album Autochthon: Its title hints correctly at a measure of avant-ish chains of non-repeating riffs, but its sound crawls from the murk of a Kentucky sinkhole. Its tracks unfurl over an average of ten uncooperative minutes, yet its individual moments can be vomitously euphoric. Its authors subscribe to a Tolstoyian ethos — seems like that guy never once crossed out a sentence — and likewise, each riff — no matter how titanic or tossed-off — shares equal billing. Tricky.

So maybe you could visualize Autochthon as the work of a quintet of guys running a marathon-length race inside a series of small rooms, all changing direction and altitude, abandoning momentum and the finish line just as fans rise to cheer. What vibe does it suit? What mood is it for? Is it for ambitious seekers of challenging jams? For lo-fi/hi-rage hoisters of non-existent fruits? For the funereally staggering or the frenzied spewing? For fans of Envy or followers of Marduk? Answer: Yes!?

Stoic Dissention’s second album Autochthon is out today via Naturmacht. Get it here and here.