ALBUM REVIEW: Worlds Open, Worlds Collide – One Tail, One Head

ONE TAIL, ONE HEAD are one of those bands who have, over the years, come to gain a solid cult following despite never having released a full length album. Since their formation back in 2006, the band have managed to put out two EPs, two demos, and have made their name off the back of excellent live performances over the years. Their elusive debut record, Worlds Open, Worlds Collide, may in fact be one of the most highly anticipated debut records in the extreme metal underground over the last few years. Now that it is finally seeing the light of day almost a decade to the day after the release of their debut demo, it’s safe to say that it has more than met the lofty expectations on fans.

Certainly Not is a short intro piece made up mostly of feedback that sets a dark and foreboding ambience for the rest of the record, slowly building until it finally launches into the albums opening track, Arrival, Yet Again; this is a really solid song with dense, primal drumming, thick and jarring guitars and a palpable bass line, which quickly dives headlong into a really intense and chaotic motif with some truly dark and sepulchral vocal deliveries. It’s a fairly straight forward, but nonetheless powerful, way to kick this album off. The title track proves to be an equally bleak and thunderous offering, with lots of beefy rhythms and energetic drum patterns that give this song a sense of urgency and forcefulness. The guitars, likewise, shift between expansive, crushing tones and an impenetrable wall of noise that makes for some excellent music. Towards the second half of the song, it begins to take on a far more atmospheric and hypnotic approach, with the music largely scaling back to a minimalist style, before jumping straight into a really bestial and ferocious motif marked by a tortured, harrowing howl and a whirlwind of noisy riffs and frenzied vocals.

Stellar Storms is a blaze of razor sharp black metal glory, full to bursting with great guitars parts, genuinely raucous vocals, intricate drumming and bubbling bass lines that all add plenty of depth and diversity to the overall sound of this song. As one of the longer songs on the record, it manages to place enough riffs and motifs into the mix to keep this song from straying into the realms of tedium, and is imbued with lots of the bands trademark savage sound to make this song sound absolutely dark and barbaric throughout. By contrast, An Utter Lack of Meaning, Hitherto Unbeknowst, Suddenly Revealed, is a short, dark ambient orientated piece of music that serves to break this album up and provide a reprieve from the records more vicious and aggressive sound. It proves to be the calm before the storm, as Firebirds quickly cements itself as one of the records most aggressive and fierce offerings. With energetic drumming and frenetic guitar hooks, all underpinned with an amazing sounding, crusty bass line, this sounds absolutely monolithic right from the first note. Vocally, it’s varied and utterly demented, shifting from harsher gutturals through to tortured howls within a short space of time.

Sordid Sanctitude takes the music back down a more ambient route, with the music being incredibly atmospheric, and with some sparse musical motifs coming in gradually, and rising to a crescendo of bleak music, driven by an authoritative drumming pattern and an equally thunderous bass line. The guitars are much more diverse on this song, shifting from heavier to lighter tones as it progresses, allowing the song to ebb and flow in and out of sharp and severe music to passages that are far more sanguine and sublime. This is a great piece of instrumental music that fully displays the depth and scope of the bands sound to the listener. Rise in Red is a fine example of just how aggressive and speed-driven this band can be, with the opening moments of this track being a whirlwind of crushing guitars, bass blasts and crashing, chaotic drumming, with some subtle atmospheric flourishes thrown into the mix to make the music sound even fuller. This song embeds itself in the listeners mind immediately, has some of the most interesting and memorable musicianship on the record, and ultimately stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of the record. This is a modern black metal classic in the making.

Passage is another contender for “best track on the record”, with it’s solid, infectious groove and powerful rhythm section blending really well with the more frenzied and visceral side of the bands music. At three minutes long, it’s a short, sharp shock of blazing riffs and arid, acidic vocals that gives the album plenty of intense moments before it launches into its climactic offering. Summon Surreal Surrender, a monolithic, sprawling ten minute long tour de force, is built around slick, hazy guitars and dense, primal drumming. It’s a song that gains more and more momentum and power as it progresses, with some sonorous, bellowing vocals being one of the only mainstays on the whole track. Incorporating a variety of different tones and performance styles, ONE TAIL, ONE HEAD are able to make the most of the ten minutes they have, filling them with a vast array of riffs, tempos and sounds, bringing together almost all of the elements that have marked this album up until this point into a single song. It’s every bit as cacophonous and bleak as the vast majority of the album that has preceded it, and ends up being a grand and monstrous slab of extreme metal that really showcases the bands talents as musicians and songwriters, taking the listener on a sonic journey through differing degrees of extremity. It’s an impressive and ambitious way of closing this record, and it works really well, leaving you wanting more as the closing notes die away.

Worlds Open, Worlds Collide is a very good record, and has been well worth the near decade long wait. There’s plenty of harsh and bestial moments on here that are counterpointed really well with tracks that focus more on atmosphere than brutality, which gives this record lots of variety. The two songs that have been reworked, Firebirds and the title track, are far more structured and impressive on here than they were on earlier demos. It really is a shame that this, in the wake of ONE TAIL, ONE HEAD‘s break up, is going to be the last piece of music we ever hear from them, because this album shows tonnes of promise and potential and you get the sense that if they had continued, they definitely would have been able to produce several great albums. It’s a great loss to the extreme metal world, and a fitting farewell to a great band.

Rating: 8/10

Worlds Open, Worlds Collide is out now via Terratur Possessions.

Like ONE TAIL, ONE HEAD on Facebook.