Review Summary: In mourning
Grief is a funny thing. Well, not exactly
funny, but certainly strange, given the sheer variety of ways in which it can manifest itself. Some folks laugh, in shock or disbelief. Others cry. Some become numb, losing touch, their senses severed. Others collapse under the weight of it all, unable to cope without that which they have lost. And then there are a select few, those with a particularly twisted musical disposition, that forgo the above and choose instead to scream into an abyss of sludgy, apocalyptic riffage. Not many, I’d imagine, but that’s what
Admiral Angry do on
A Fire to Burn Down the World. The title is apt.
Written by guitarist Daniel Krauss and released shortly after his passing,
A Fire… is
Admiral Angry saying goodbye. With 23 minutes of bleak, droning hardcore, the group pay tribute to the young visionary behind their sound, setting the skies ablaze in honour of everything he stood for. As you might have guessed, it’s rather
loud. The guitar work on display here – splattered across the singular, linear track – is as vile as it is ground breaking; and I don’t just mean innovative, I mean
literally earth shattering. Hulking riffs trudge along mercilessly, the track straining under their weight, creaking and quaking in protest. Chris Linblad’s agonised vocals cut cleanly through the resultant rubble, the man violently yelping as if in actual physical pain.
The energy and playful aggression of their 2008 full-length,
Buster, is entirely absent here, cast aside by
A Fire… in its pursuit of sonic filth. Dynamics left by the wayside, it creeps along at an unnervingly sluggish pace, almost sinking into drone territory as it brims at the surface with murky, drop-tuned sludge. Unkempt rage transforms into anguished mourning as landmine drum kicks erupt beneath the surface, providing direction to an otherwise unchartered sea of distortion and fuzz. It’s brutal, for sure, but never simply for the sake of being
heavy. Each chugging twist and turn feels orchestrated with an emotive impetus and intent, with every desperate breakdown hitting like a car crash in slow motion.
As the track shudders to a halt, fading into feedback after one last audial assault,
A Fire… feels significant. A gaping crater has been left in the world of heavy music, sadly unbeknownst to most of its inhabitants, and Daniel is at its epicentre. All is not lost, however, for the EP captures his musical ethos in flame and smoke, his unique spark encapsulated in an utterly terrifying eulogy. The man’s mastery of hopeless atmosphere bleeds through each second of uncompromising fury, preserved for the rest of us to gawk at with a mixture of joy and fear for years to come. As seems to have been the band’s intent, and indeed Daniel's, for in his own words: “We’ve never stopped and we never will. Sound lives forever. We hope our music is most unpleasant”. Amen to that.
