Review Summary: might transport you to an autumnal forest
Three minutes is all it takes for
Succumb to reveal its intentions. While a violent assault opens One With the Riverbed’s third full length, “Succumb” unfolds and allows space for quiet melodies to develop into a grand, sweeping conclusion. It’s the kind of track that would have been the closer on a lesser album, but makes perfect sense as an introduction as it transitions into the more explicitly blackened tones of “Dominion” - a cut so ferocious that the downright gorgeous post-rock tendencies of its latter half transform into something eerier, something haunting. It’s one of
Succumb’s most remarkable feats: each lush, melodic note feels drenched in the ominous nature of all that came before and is certain to follow.
It is this very sense of dynamics that allows the record to grow into its own with each passage. Songs take shape, shift, and rebuild themselves persistently - while this is a structure that can get somewhat predictable, it never feels unwarranted or unnecessary. Moreover, the way a cut like “Purified” seamlessly transitions its near-ambient meanderings into devastating blackened post-metal makes the song, and by extension the record, feel complete. It’s the kind of album where each moment
sounds, pick your adjective, pretty/overwhelming/pensive/grand, but it is the full, uninterrupted experience that solidifies
Succumb as near-hypnotic. The larger-than-life “Sunlight” closes the record on a highlight, carefully showcasing the excellence of each instrument once more - whether this be the pained screams or the way drums crash and flow into the looming atmosphere - and see to the realisation of the project’s organically overwhelming vision. It takes three minutes to understand where
Succumb wants to go, but it takes fifty-three to realise it’s been there all along.
