ALBUM REVIEW: Azimuth – Arriver

Chicago’s ARRIVER have long been fusing their brands of post-doom and heavy progressive metal into a confronting and mind-melting manifestation of wild riffs and demonic roars. Now on fourth album Azimuth, they push the envelope further still with their most experimental foray to date.

Azimuth’s narrative is based around a protagonist facing internal turmoil, which seems like something that a lot of people can identify with over the past few tumultuous years. Indeed, ARRIVER created the majority of this album under pandemic conditions, and so isolation and confinement were front of mind. A sufficient explanation then for why these 44 minutes are so rife with out-of-the-box thinking and wild sonic venturing. Take opener Reenactor for example – a tremendously textured and mind-boggling track that layers a range of emotions, wraps them up in stacks of influences and then throws that bundle full pelt against a reinforced wall of moody dissonance. The result is an unpredictable splatter of its many parts, jutting out in all directions from that one central point of impact.

Knot dials up the Americana with radio-friendly guitar melodies buried deep within hellacious roars and howls; meanwhile lead single Only On sets the scene of a barren landscape, wistfully panning across the open tundra before stumbling upon a violent explosion of squealing, tortured guitars and earth-shattering drums and vocals. Already, only halfway through the album, it’s clear that Azimuth fits into the post-doom and heavy prog categories, but ARRIVER is a multi-faceted beast that never settles into those two niches.

The title track is a particularly out-there effort, the opening of which can only be described as sounding like a late-noughties indie band playing off against a death metal band, like a heavier version of that scene in Scott Pilgrim vs The World when SEX BOB-OMB face off against THE KATAYANAGI TWINS. There’s a bizarre dichotomy wherein your head can’t make much sense of such disparate elements and it all sounds like a bit of a mess, but once you get into the swing of things with this track, ARRIVER’s ability to harness the polyrhythmic madness is quite mesmeric. Switching it up again, the end of this behemoth song fuses classic rock chords with growls and bluesy wails, placing it somewhere on the fringes of the FAITH NO MORE and GOATSNAKE realm, but still ultimately worlds away from that. 

None More Unknown brings proceedings to a far slower and more wistful close, toeing the line between shoegaze and doom. It’s a gorgeous close to the album that neatly ties up the narrative. While our protagonist has won his battle, he mourns what was lost along the way and questions whether it was ultimately worth it. If you thought you were getting a happy ending here, you are sorely mistaken, and the layering of emotion, the mourning guilt, the bittersweet taste of victory, is a perfect conclusion for an album that has been anything but straightforward.

ARRIVER’s modus operandi is an interesting concept and here on Azimuth it’s certainly the most fleshed out and fully realised it’s ever been. While it may take some time to really bed yourself into this one, once you do, the rewards are ripe for the reaping. 

Rating: 7/10

Azimuth is set for release on March 4th via self-release.

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