Review Summary: Death metal ooze fest.
Lately it’s been hard to write. It's still really hard to write. This year has taken something from me, taken
things away from me but mostly it’s taken me until now to realise that I have no real answer as to how to dig myself out from all this. Let’s get a little personal here, maybe provide a sense of backstory: you see my eldest child was diagnosed with T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia at the end of January. We had little warning, it was one of those things you skim by on social media and think “poor kid, that won’t happen to us but”. A few bruises, fatigue and an impromptu trip to the local emergency ward would change just about everything we thought about life. In the months that followed, even up until now we’ve suffered through a rollercoaster of medical treatments, near deaths, expenses and a loss of the things most would take for granted. I don’t write this looking to harp on a world of ‘woe is me’ bull***. I’ve seen people with worse, or with less. I don’t want to take away a readers’ individual need to address their own problems, nor am I suggesting that my life issues are so important that everybody needs to jump in line with a sense of condolence, whether they’re real or contrived. What I’m really trying to say is it’s getting harder to define myself as a person, as a man in the modern world or to tear some really nasty thought processes out of my head lest they take over and transport me to a new, more terrible plane. It’s just getting harder to write, to keep going.
My escape
used to be in music, a library of sounds more in tune with my
moods than my own psyche could explain. Angsty? Throw on some raging nu-metal from my teenage years. Reflective about my upbringing? Some U2, B.B. King or even Enya would blur the lines in the void. Stressed or in need of an arse-kicking? Ah, the beloved genre of death metal would tick that box. These days however I can’t simply Ulcerate or Gorguts my way out of a funk. What used to provide a sense of escapism now feels like a chore. I’m probably burnt out, by life mostly and I can’t see the forest through the trees, but when I do throw on records like
Seeping EvocationI still manage to resonate with the ebb and flow, the technicality, the ability to be transformed or somewhere else. More importantly for avant death duo Acausal Intrusion, the soundscapes continue the trajectory of the debut—ensnaring the senses in a tumble, a decadent layer of death metal poison flowing like smoke billowing out of a fire. Watch the smoke rise and its form swirls, transforms and spreads…not quite disappearing. At least not until it has run its course. Perhaps this is exactly what the opening stanzas in “Putrefaction” are for. Ethereal harmonies layer over the top of each other with a distinct eerie atmosphere. Almost as if to say
Seeping Evocation runs the polar opposite to where expectation would take it. “Formless Conjoining Chaos” uses this aesthetic to build and jar away from the balls-out blasting so prominent in today’s death metal scene instead providing a recurrence, an assurance that dissonance and lack of restraint will reign supreme throughout this venture.
Seeping Evocation distances itself from furor by winding its motifs in almost impossible to follow compositions.
Understandably, Acausal Intrusion’s sophomore, just like the debut is densely packed in with nuanced bites, aesthetics born of the death metal genre as a whole but somehow tucked under walls of dissonance and tonal jank. More often than not you’ll hear the album’s larger percussive element pivot in and out of time—a mastery of tempo in place of not using tempo at all. One frantic insight into this is “Mnemonic Confabulation” which doom riffs its way through a march of wailing feedback and popping drum beats. It’s the fills that tumult and launch, putting the often frenzied, angular guitar motifs on their own level before catching up again at the next phrase. These first two tracks (excluding the introduction) carve out a third of the new album’s run-time, cementing the pacing, sound and atmosphere of everything that follows. Maybe that’s it. I’ve been told so many times now “you’ve done well, you’ve made it through the most difficult part of this journey”. It’s at these times I want to scream, my mind wants to think there’s a finish line in sight—except I still can’t ***ing see it.
Well congratulations! You’ve made it this far, maybe you’re on the other side of it and the light is just over yonder horizon. Except
Seeping Evocation, like me, isn’t done yet. There’s no silver lining out there, nor is there a trophy for making it this far. “Transformational Death Phenomenon” is irrationally on point for a guy so lost in something he doesn’t know how to get out of. The anxiety and torment is wrapped in the rage of Cave Ritual’s ever increasing drum chops or in the surge of riffs from string-ster Nythroth. The sound itself confirms itself only to joining the un-joinable, cleaving sinew and riff in a cesspool of noise, polluted only by the moral decay found in its creators minds. Even the acoustic “Nythra Kthunae Atazoth” is a clime following in the footsteps of the other tracks' more electrically charged dichotomy. The contrast between the parts is welcome, a break away from the charged range, lighter sparks struck against a tinderbox, anticipation awaiting the flame that doesn’t come after repeated blows. Sometimes life (and death) is exactly like that.
Deeper, doomier cult cuts like “Ostensible Implanted Inheritance” don’t let up on
Seeping Evocation’s irreversible tension. This record is made to be confronting, a sinister gaping hole that stares quizzically into what
death can and can’t be. Questions will be asked and the answers won’t come. Hyperbolic phrasing is all that’s needed to cast light into the din and bleakness. The track’s melodies also seem to gravitate towards the breadth of the deeper vocals and broad chord sweeps. Acausal Intrusion once again brings a sense of familiarity into a recurring motif, allowing the listener a finger hold in place of a firm grip—prying a single finger off just to test the resolve of those brave enough to try holding on. Perhaps I’m too invested in what
Seeping Evocation has to offer, too willing to dive into the mirth and juxtaposed ideas of manifested familiarity and irreplaceable formlessness. I’ve written this review vague and raw, matching at least some of
what I feel, lest I write nothing at all. These last few weeks Acausal Intrusion have acted as some level of reassurance, even as I molest their themes for my own individual themes. My brain is doing all it can to keep up.
Seeping Evocation is doing all it can to distance itself from the norm and yet, my inner turmoil can find a home here between the unconventional drum patterns, the discordant angular riffs and tormenting melodies. More likely I’ve simply had enough, gone mad and my thought process is putting what it can together—something weird, emotive and heavy enough to pass the inaccessible test. Chaos it seems, makes sense. Chaos
seeps evocation.
