Contender for album of the year, Nocturnal Birding leaves me with a sense of guilt. As a renewed appreciation of brilliance settles in, I ask, how is it I don't return to their records? Once again, an uncompromising pursuit of crushing expression transfixes. A unique, dystopian breed of imposing brutality. A harsh design melding bleak aesthetics and rhythmic led musicality. Every aspect of this witchcraft serves its purpose, to burrow into the darkest recesses of ones mind and expose the suffering.
Achieved through dense industrial slabs of distortion guitar and bleeding synth, the battering drums perpetually bang and crash with such momentous force, a sluggish beast of enormity crushing all in its path. Most its pacing tends to be mid-tempo, feeling slower, with spurts of collapsing pulse like on the devastating end to Titmice.
Textural pleasures emerge as crashing walls of sound bend with malice, intermittent with quirky, unhinged melodies lurching in the spaces between. Overtop, siren synths cry out in pain, danger imminent. Through it all, ferocious screams and brooding shouts of anger shimmer in what little space this claustrophobic wall of sound offers.
Nocturnal Birding is a gripping experience, bleak visions exhaling demons brought to life in its unrelenting intensity. Author & Punisher continues on a predictable path yet finding the fruits of creative labor as the resulting songs bewitch once again. At thirty five minutes its a perfectly lean slice of mania served on a hot plate. Just stunning!
Rating: 8/10