ALBUM REVIEW: Sin Querencia – Immortal Bird
Chicago’s IMMORTAL BIRD are a band with a broad musical range. Taking a bleak and foreboding black metal sound and applying liberal helpings of sludge, crust punk and death metal, along with a few hints of grind and thrash into their eclectic mix, each of the band’s records, right from their debut EP, 2013’s Akrasia, has been thoroughly feral and emotive. With their restless, energetic sound across this and their first two albums, Empress/Abscess and Thrive On Neglect, serving the band well and establishing the trio as one of the most searing and frenetic acts within the US’ black metal scene. Their latest album, Sin Querencia, not only continues this trend, but pushes its harsher elements to even greater extremes, making for what is arguably the bands most caustic effort to date.
Bioluminescent Toxins, with its crawling and sinister sound built around brooding guitars, hypnotic drums and disjointed hooks, is a great, slow-burning way to kick this album off. As it gathers pace and as caustic, snarling vocals are thrown into the mix, this is transformed into a discordant piece of bleak black metal that, in spite of its measured pace, manages to carry enough emotive weight to ensure it makes an impact. Plastered Sainthood embraces a looser guitar sound and a chaotic approach, with frenetic drums and equally belligerent basslines creating an imposing backdrop on which the impenetrable, jarring riffs and caustic vocals provide a dark and visceral edge, making this even more feral, with fluid, proggy bursts peppered throughout to add to the unhinged, varied sound on offer.
Consanguinity, a ponderous, dissonant behemoth with huge, percussive drums and biting, immersive guitar work, reverts somewhat to the mid-paced sound of the album’s opener, albeit with an experimental twist that sees ethereal interludes vie with bestial aggression for attention, with the vocals taking on an impressively coarse and noxious depth that only serves to make this utterly searing. Propagandized sees the music depart from the murky black metal style and shift towards a tighter, angular one that’s noticeably indebted to thrash, with its razor sharp leads and thunderous, cacophonous rhythmic undercurrent making for a vitriolic, rabid slab of Blackened Thrash that is undoubtedly one of this albums heavier, denser efforts.
Ocean Endless retains the sombre elements that were central to the first half but pairs this with an utterly blistering and bellicose sound that borders on grindcore in its full throttle intensity and menacing, unflinching harshness. As the song progresses, it becomes a perfect marriage between the robust grooves of the preceding song and the atmosphere-drenched qualities of the central black metal thread that runs through this record, making for arguably one of the album’s most eclectic performances. Synthetic Alliances, with its piercing hooks and rumbling, juggernaut drums, is another great track with an expansive sound that develops the grating blackened sound to gargantuan heights, morphing into a frenzied and grinding sound that really pushes the music to its faster, frantic extremes.
Contrarian Companions takes the tumultuous sound that characterised the latter part of the last track and slows it significantly, returning to the lighter black metal flourishes that were dominant earlier in the album, but incorporates plenty of musical twists and forceful flourishes that has made just as many of these offerings so impactful and demented, blending together these two sides of the bands sound more seamlessly than on any other track on this album. Sin Querencia, at first, appears to be a reserved and streamlines version of the style that has been present throughout this album, but quickly morphs towards nauseating guitars, energetic, thunderous drumming and acidic, hissing vocal lines, providing an accessible iteration of the core sound that IMMORTAL BIRD have explored across the whole of Sin Querencia, bringing this record to its climax on a catchier example of its main musical tenets.
Although the band’s first two albums are certainly incredibly abrasive and visceral in their own right, with Sin Querencia, IMMORTAL BIRD have seemingly taken this harsh and punishing approach to songwriting to new an even more feral heights. With the controlled chaos that was present at the heart of Thrive On Neglect being more often replaced with cacophonous aggression and searing, stringent elements that applies a biting quality to this cavernous and forceful formula, seeing the band shift into even darker territories sonically than ever before. This focus on belligerence and rabidity pays dividends, proving to be their most impressive work so far, primarily due to its pummelling, primal edge.
Rating: 8/10
Sin Querencia is out now via 20 Buck Spin.
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