Thursday, March 6, 2014

Indian - From All Purity



Artist: Indian
Album: From All Purity
Label: Relapse
Year: 2014


Indian’s 2011 album Guiltless was one of the heaviest records I’d ever heard, and From All Purity is just as crusty and ferocious as its predecessor. With a blast radius that’s roughly comparable to the payload of a B-2 bomber, From All Purity is as devastating and misanthropic a collection of music as you will ever hear. The Chicago doom metal/sludgecore unit has steadily refined its approach over the last decade with a series of mercilessly heavy releases that expanded their fanbase and earned them growing critical acclaim. Guiltless was a breakthrough for them, and the band has spent the time off since its release preparing a devastating followup. For all the accolades their previous album earned, I’m of the mind that From All Purity is even better, a further distillation of their repulsive essence.

This is an unforgivably harsh and abrasive record. It features horrific vocals and unbelievably heavy guitars caked in sheets of distorted noise which add an extra layer of demented insanity to the proceedings. Everything about From All Purity is crusty, blown out, and horrifying. These songs don’t let up for an instant in their hellish intensity. When played at a suitably damaging volume, these strangled, agonizing screams and massive walls of guitars scour all traces of thought from your mind. It’s not something you’ll find yourself humming to yourself, and nothing about it is at all catchy. Instead this is an album meant to be experienced, and given the chance it will punish your eardrums and scrub all trace of sanity from your mind.

“Rape,” as the title might suggest, is a suitably distressing opener. Its fitful pounding and unbearably heavy distortion are punctuated with excruciating screams and stabs feedback -- it’s like crawling through broken glass. “The Impetus Bleeds” is equally painful, downshifting further into a yawning chasm of blackness. One track is almost purely noise, veering into Yellow Swans territory. It’s called “Clarify,” and it’s really just a 5 minute interlude made up of sheets of raw distortion and agonizing feedback. Sequenced between the pounding sludge trudges that make up most of the album, it acts as a sort of palette cleanser, scouring the listener’s mind in preparation for the next megaton riff detonation. The hammer drops with the finale, and my personal favourite, “Disambiguation.” It’s almost 8 minutes of mournful, resplendent doom, at once more spacious and majestic than everything that had come before, while retaining the malevolent immediacy that is this record’s trademark. Even when the band seems about to ride the riffs into oblivion, a jarring blast of doublekicks and tremolo picking blasts through the centre of the mix, adding a further dimension to the extremity of the band. It’s a fitting conclusion, and one that suggests new possibilities for the band. Just think… with the final two tracks, they’ve shown the ability to be noisier and more powerful than they ever have before.

People have compared Indian to Eyehategod, and while the comparisons are warranted, there are very little in the way of that New Orleans crew’s sporadic hardcore-inflected sprints here. Even when they play a little bit faster, the standard “rat-ta-tat” polka beat used by rudimentary hardcore drummers isn’t to be found.  Instead Indian has always taken cues from the bottom-heavy tom-pummeling of early High on Fire. There is also more than a little of Khanate’s hateful malice on display here, from the shrieking feedback, to the gnarled, wretched delivery of the vocals to the swollen, galactic bass tones. The drums are gigantic, relentlessly marching into oblivion, relentlessly crushing everything in their path. Indian has learned to strike their own balance between space and cacophony, giving the music room to breathe even when the listener is given none. What started to change first with Guiltless and is now on full display here is Indian’s patience. They don’t try to overplay anything, instead standing back and letting these massive songs swallow the listener whole.

The key differences between this record and Indian’s early material are improved recording quality and Indian’s improved understanding of how to make their songs more immersive and continuously devastating. Previous records bludgeoned, but this one simply lays waste. Some doom metal can sound distant and cavernous. From All Purity is enormous to be sure, but it’s immediate. It makes your speakers sound like they’re bleeding. When the singer strains his larynx screaming unintelligibly at you, you can almost feel the heat of his breath on your face. And there are subtleties here that only become apparent with repeated listens – how the riffs are deliberately constructed, the depth of the sound, the way the cacophony is layered to maximize the claustrophobic terror of the music. Far from a bunch of malcontents bashing out tuneless noise, there is a real understanding of the form and physicality of the music at work here, and their expertise is enough to provoke a shudder in even the most hardened listeners.

From All Purity is notable in that it doesn’t adhere to the “more is more” philosophy of most doom metal, where albums routinely top the one hour mark and songs tend to linger for interminable amounts of time. Indian’s sense of economy comes from their hardcore leanings… most of these songs are 6 to 8 minutes long and agonizingly slow, but they make their point without lingering long enough to get tuned out. It makes for a more powerful listen, an addictive revenge fantasy that channels the hatefulness that exists within all of us. But its clarity of intension is somehow cleansing. We NEED records that help us deal with that negativity. Put on the record when you are having a shitty day, and in less than 40 minutes you won’t even remember why you were so upset. Your memory will be scrubbed clean.

This is not for everyone, obviously. Even some metalheads will find the lack of intelligible hooks, or the generally straightforward and blunt untechnicality of the playing to be unsatisfying. But the ugly, tormented ordeal that is listening to From All Purity will find its share of fans, particularly those who don’t care about singing along and just want to hear the most nightmarish noise imaginable. Indian have trumped themselves with this record. It’s also one of the best things I’ve heard this year.