Rating: 8.5

Country: England

Release Date: 2007

Record Label: Profound Lore

Track list:
1. I
2. II
3. II
4. IV
5. V
6. VI
7. I Hate the Human Race (Grief Cover)

Band Website: Atavist

Atavist - II: Ruined

Toby Bradshaw - Vocals
Chris Naughton - Guitar
Shane Ryan - Bass
Simon Lucas - Drums

I recently heard some hipster say over the steam of his mochalattefrappuccino that "sludge is the new metalcore." Bullshit, I say. If the majority of albums occupying metal shelves were like this, I might not be so pissed off all the time. Doom metal, in general, has a sprawling potential I don't sense in many other genres. Allow me to explain. Music, by my definition, is primarily a sonic vehicle of emotions. From the (forgive the following broad generalizations) calculated fury of technical death metal, to the the righteous anger of thrash metal, to the disenfranchised angst of industrial, to the melancholy arrogance of black metal, to the nausea -- er, jovial camaraderie of power metal, etc. etc., ad infinitum, music conveys these emotions in the context of an artistic aesthetic. However, for each emotion, there is a threshold that separates music from self-parody. For example, too much anger is infantile, and is a factor in the birth of the 90's "nu-metal," while too much happiness is saccharine. But what's interesting is that doom metal seems to be an exception to this unwritten rule; the more miserable, twisted, and bottom-heavy, the better. To wit, we've come from Black Sabbath to records that consist entirely of clinically insane people screaming over furniture-shaking feedback, and it's only getting more extreme. Good, I say.

Enter Manchester's Atavist, purveyors of tectonic sludge deconstruction who fall somewhere between the wasted sludgecore of bands like Eyehategod and bowel-battering drone of Sunn O))). Bass rumbles hypnotically like dissipating thunder over violently plodding drums (that snare tone sounds like rocks being struck together), patterns of blackened crust loop like the cobweb-entangled hand of a broken grandfather clock stuck between 12 and 1, while Toby Bradshaw's gruff, gurgling howls lends the music the disillusioned voice of a sinking ship's captain. All of this converges in an extremely candid sludge album that's painfully exposed, but never self-indulgent. If music was ejaculation, Atavist would be shooting blood.

Ruined is Atavist's most concise effort to date, with the shortest real songs approaching six to seven minutes, but it's still an excruciating endeavor that's no stranger to 15 minute swamp dirges of loping subsonic frequencies drenched in squealing feedback. Ruined being slightly more streamlined than past recordings (keep in mind that's like saying that a Scientologist is dumber than a Mormon -- perhaps true, but the difference isn't profound) allows Atavist more diversity than they previously had room to navigate. So while the final seven or so minutes of the third song, for instance, is composed of desperately paced, oceanic expanses of crumbling sonic architecture, Atavist isn't afraid to occasionally dip into swinging Electric Wizard-esque stoner grooves and bitter, introverted acoustic interludes.

What will either make or break this album for you is that it borrows some of the funereal "post-metal" doom dynamics from the likes of Ocean, Isis, Khanate, etc. But instead of merely being tacked on as arty filler to create the illusion of diversity, the somber bits render the mossy slabs of texturally brilliant doom all the more lethal; delicate piano and acoustic guitar notes reverberate hopelessly into the void, prophesizing eruptions of subterranean sludge and endurance-testing drone. Like a cat batting around a wounded mouse, Ruined will toy with you one second, then bare its claws and go in for the kill when you're emotionally and physically exhausted. All of this is punctuated with a rampaging cover of Grief's (one of these guy's most obvious influences) "I Hate the Human Race"; worth the price of admission alone.

If you're still with me, you're either into this stuff or you're not. This is basically what you extreme doomsters expect, except Atavist take it and rape it, ensuring it years of therapy bills. And listen to it loud, of course.

November 29th, 2007