Artist......: Deliverance
Album.......: Neon Chaos in a Junk-Sick Dawn
Year........: 2022
Genre.......: Black Metal
Label.......: Les Acteurs de l'Ombre Prod.
Cat.No......:
Source......: WEB (24bit)
Encoder.....: libFLAC
Quality.....: 2834kbps avg. / 96.0kHz / 2 channels
Playtime....: 01:02:05 (1290.3MB)
R.date......: 2023-01-16
S.date......: 2022-11-04
Website.....: http://open.qobuz.com/album/zvnh3630c4sba
Disc 1 / 1
--------
01. Salvation Needs a Gun 6:18
02. Venereal 4:42
03. Odyssey 18:12
04. Up-Tight 8:07
05. Neon Chaos 7:22
06. Fragments of a Diary from Hell 17:24
Generally when I see an album advertised as blackened sludge or
sludge/black metal, I get the automatic notion that it's going to be very
dredging, crushingly slow and heavy material with a rasping vocalist, and a
focus more highly on the heaviness and production than on a sense of
interesting riffing-ness. So I was pleasantly surprised to hear a band like
Deliverance shrug off such preconceptions, with a highly varied third
full-length in Neon Chaos in a Junk Sick Dawn (clearly one of the coolest
album titles of the year). This is a group interested in pushing the
boundaries a little wider, that's not to say that there aren't plenty of
the requisite grooving doomy sludge passages throughout the staggering 62
minutes of content, but so much of it is well balanced, riff-strong and
calculated to keep your brain engaged with more than straining the neck to
which it is attached through leaden headbanging.
For one, the band implements synths tastefully throughout, little
electronic pulses that serve mainly to complement the guitars and vocals,
through a mix of brooding organ-like tones or more modern electronica
vibes. They're never too brazen or dominant and they instantly give Neon
Chaos another dimension forbidden to most such records, some added melodic
drama. There are also cleaner, sparse minimalistic passages like the intro
to one of the record's two leviathan-sized tracks, "Odyssey", which give
you plenty of breathing space. When it comes to the crushing, they've got
that too, but I feel that most of the nastiness comes through in the
tortured intonations of the vocalist, whereas the riffs are usually well
written enough to remain catchy (even when derivative), and you've got the
glaze of those keys to distract your conscience while your chin nods along
to those grooves. There are often little surprise chords or note patterns
inserted through the rhythm guitars so they don't just become some
repetitive afterthought.
The band is even competent with straight-ahead black metal progressions
like they kick off the album with ("Salvation Needs a Gun"), where the
organ works perfectly to saturate the moderate blasted speed with a mood of
nostalgia, and then it breaks into the more arpeggiated sounding synth and
groove and you're already off to the races with catchiness. The big
challenge is the aforementioned titanic tunes, "Odyssey" and the finale
"Fragments of a Diary from Hell", but rather than dragging on, they are
clearly plotted, purposeful and loaded with cool hooks, and where it does
descent into a little more space and experimentation, it's rather cool with
some narrative vocals over the top, dissonant guitar ringing out, plunking
syrup-thick bass strokes and other earworms that keep you satisfied until
they break into the excellent climax (of the latter), which is probably the
peak of the whole experience. The album isn't always on fire, but overall
it's quite well done.
-autothrall