III

All Are To Return

Take a look at the album cover to find out what lies within…death, nothingness, void, antimatter, extermination, extinction. This is one extreme way to view global warning and the hand-in-hand catastrophes. Are we too late? I don’t know if there is any discernable way to know for sure. But if we are, this album will play at our funerals.
April 1, 2024

This is a dark record. From Bandcamp comes the following prophetic words: Our habitats swallowed by rising seas, engulfed in flames. As we drown, burn, or slowly parch and wither, we remember. Oceans heat and corals die as pale sludge in bright blue waters – thousands of years of unfathomable complexity undone in decades. Forests burn and ancient trees that were young when the pharaohs build their monuments perish in the flames. Poisons have spread through all ecosystems. The product of profit-maximizing agriculture at war with life. As insects disappear they signal extinction on a massive scale. What is lost, is lost forever. We will remember you through your shattered bones, your battered skulls turned fossil. We will remember you through your plastic deposits, your carbon waste, your radioactive poisons still leaking into our bodies. We will remember your bright and brief existence – and the inevitability of your demise.

The album has eight songs, and “Hunger Stones” is first. The opening tones are full of noise…white noise in the background, and the foreground is filled with distortion, to the effect of creating an undefined, but harrowing sound. If you listen closely, you can hear some semblance of vocals. “Moratorium” is another chaotic song. On many levels, the music is meant to mirror the ominous message in the introduction, and if this is the case, we are sinking faster than many people realize. It may already be too late. Still, this music so far barely even fits the criteria of what many people think of when they think of “music.”

“Colony Collapse” paint another picture of anarchy and pandemonium. Some might argue that this is already the case the world over. Although conventional wisdom would suggest that it is only on a limited scale, one can see this viewpoint. “Legacy” typically refers to something good that someone left behind when they died. In this case, it is an endowment of disease and death. Cold winds rise up and blow with hurricane force. Nothing that lives could withstand the onslaught. “Drift” is filled with frightening effects that echo with their purpose, and the high end screeches make your ears bleed. I wonder if this is what the band feels all of humanity is doing…drifting aimlessly. “Archive of the Sky” might as well be a record of nothing after the earth perishes. Intense vocal screams can be heard, so horrifying that one listen can turn you to dust.

“The Vaults” have what sounds like footsteps leading to a place of the dead…the Underworld. An eerie sound comes from deep within, and it explodes and retreats. “Kenopsia” is a Greek word that means “eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that was once bustling with activity but is now abandoned and empty.” The odd thing here is that it sounds animated and alive to me, before the ending, where it drifts off to unconsciousness. Take a look at the album cover to find out what lies within…death, nothingness, void, antimatter, extermination, extinction. This is one extreme way to view global warning and the hand-in-hand catastrophes. Are we too late? I don’t know if there is any discernable way to know for sure. But if we are, this album will play at our funerals.

8 / 10

Excellent

Songwriting

8

Musicianship

7

Memorability

8

Production

8
"III" Track-listing:

1. Hunger Stones

2. Moratorium

3. Colony Collapse

4. Legacy

5. Drift

6. Archive of the Sky

7. The Vaults

8. Kenopsia

 

All Are To Return Lineup:

F – Instruments, Vocals, Effects

N – Synths, Effects

 

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