ALBUM REVIEW: Discarnate Ails – Haunter
California’s HAUNTER have had an incredibly storied and impressive career since their formation close to a decade ago. Starting out as screamo band before heading down a far more blackened death metal route, the band’s sound has only grown more aggressive and discordant with each subsequent release, garnering them plenty of attention and praise within underground circles. Their latest and third album Discarnate Ails not only serves as arguably the band’s creative peak thus far, but also sees them take their sound into even more progressive and intriguing realms than ever before.
The album starts incredibly strongly with Overgrown With The Moss, which shifts from its ominous opening motif to a cavernous, bombastic sound rather abruptly, with huge guitars, tight, thunderous drums and roaring gutturals all building an imposing sound fairly quickly. Musically, there’s a lot on offer here, from brooding, doom-laden sections to fiercer, melody driven guitars more evocative of black metal, with a generous dose of unhinged freneticism akin to grindcore at various points. It makes for an incredibly diverse and imaginative start to the record, covering a lot of ground musically without making the substance of the song sound too crowded.
Spiritual Illness is a fairly short, punchy track compared to the two offerings that it is placed between. It leans heavily into the catchier and more focused sound that featured on the album’s opening effort, but manages to pepper in some jarring and chaotic moments, with the guitars and vocals especially taking on an ethereal, hypnotic quality. Dense, precise rhythms inject a pronounced death metal influence into the mix, along with some brief bursts of caustic, rabid brutality that lend the song an energetic, unpredictable edge that works well when employed. It’s grandiose and grating in equal measure, and serves as a memorable yet streamlined version of what preceded it.
The monolithic Chained At The Helm Of The Eschaton adopts an excellent blend of jangling, cleaner leads and chunkier, savage rhythms, jumping seamlessly between crawling, bleak passages and focused, bestial ones with ease, giving this an engrossing feel from start to finish. It also features some of the most impressive and varied musicianship on the album, with some exceptionally brilliant lead guitars that provide a distinct slickness in amongst the more ferocious approach of the rest of the music. These, along with the more wide-ranging vocals, help to add an interesting and beguiling change of pace that gives the listener some newer elements to appreciate without stripping away any of the visceral and dissonant core of this band’s sound. Despite being the album’s longest offering, it’s a track that doesn’t grow stale or lose any of its appeal, bringing the record to a close on arguably one of its finest moments.
It’s often the case that, over the course of time, a band gradually shifts from a harsher sound to a more polished and punchy one. HAUNTER seem to be moving in exactly the opposite direction, with Discarnate Ails being the apex of their more expansive and progressive output so far. Since Sacramental Death Qualia came out in 2019, it’s become very clear that the band have started to move towards longer and more eclectic compositions, with this latest album being arguably their very best, not just from a musicianship and song-writing stance, but also in terms of production. Where Sacramental Death Qualia possessed a rawer sound and a noticeable reticence to full embrace their experimental side at times, Discarnate Ails strides confidently forward from the first note to the last, with the crisp production allowing all of the myriad flourishes to be prominently heard, and keeping things catchy and memorable despite the adventurous and at times feral approach of the music. This is a great example of how to create extreme metal that is both unflinchingly bellicose and chaotic, whilst still having an appealing and tight sound that will grab the listener’s attention.
Rating: 9/10
Discarnate Ails is out now via Profound Lore Records.
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