Review Summary: Hardened and tightened, Maths have ascended.
Maths’ first album,
Descent, was an unfocused affair. It sounded melodic and titanic but it never meshed well with the concept of the album. The result was music that was more representative of the band in an identity crisis; un-empathic and directionless. However
Ascent finally sees them tightening up their act and establishing an identity for themselves.
The EP is more or less one continuous song with the traditional melodies composed of repetitive chords with odd-time signatures, ascending and descending in waves pulsing with rage. As with the song structure, the album gravitates between fast and slow tempo changes, quiet and loud dynamics, all bound and taut around the core melodies with a fanatical dedication to minimalism. The moments of high-pitched, post-rock guitar work are cut back, only being implemented in the slower, more reflective moments of “The Wind Swept Away.” Yet in cutting away the excess, the guitar work feels coherent, giving much needed breathing space for reflection, and purposeful in conveying the concept of the EP. It feels as organic as the sound of
Ascent is. It grows with the tightly woven trunk of the EP. Bass and guitar interchange and lead off each other with an ease that feels unstructured; the shifts between tempos flow like water through a person’s fingertips. The drums, while buried in the mix, offer a deep stability in their patterns, beats rising for support on the lower chords and fading into the flow when the riffs rise to the higher end of the fretboard. The screams are also held in check, letting the instruments convey the emotions in the more reflective moments of the EP while intertwining with the sound when it is at it’s most intense. Thanks to this methodical approach to the song-writing, their is no misstep in the music, it pulses and breaths, it is all things in nature. Thanks to the coarse production, the music feels deep and primordial yet when backed against the constant wall of one-note ambience, it feels vast and enlightened, stretching beyond the tight structures. It moves between natural contrasts and in doing so it comes alive.
Yet this is also it’s weakness. As well as the album flows, the eleven minute run time is not enough for the album to fully express itself, especially with two of the four songs being under two minutes in length. The pushing of the guitars and bass to the front of the mix establishes a strong core but shoves the drums to the side. The riffs and bass-lines are memorable but at the expense of the drum patterns. It is not to enough to hurt this release but a greater length to the EP and some leeway in their minimalistic tendencies would have a created a better display of Maths’ talent. Despite this though, they have progressed with their music, finding an identity for it from the sum of all its parts, one that embodies all of nature’s aspects. With this release, the only path for Maths is ascension.
