Review Summary: Stepping into a grim, lumbering waltz…
There are some pieces of music just ripe for hyperbole and Dragged Into Sunlight’s
Terminal Aggressor II is but one fine example. An introduction of feedback and despair rings a world of static into a tormenting atmosphere.
Terminal Aggressor II is not unlike smoke; slowly unfurling, rising, spreading into a mass with the potential to block light or snuff life. But when does the slow build of hyperbole fail to stay exactly that? For Dragged Into Sunlight’s 2020 EP is a molten display of genre fusing sludge metal that lives up to the torment of body, soul and mind that reaches all manners of devastating climax within its second half. Despite the outward presentation of misanthropic heaviness, this U.K. based four piece highlight just how music can build, with patience into something as beautiful as it is compositionally dissonant.
Despite the slow build of
Terminal Aggressor II’s entity, its unabashed design is meticulous; careful and fully transferable to its listener. It’s this bold musicianship that launches this overwhelming atmosphere into a whirlwind of patient, yet lumbering riffs. The smoke on the fire builds slowly, but is formless in primitive beginnings. But it’s the patience rewarded in the EP’s latter half which makes the abrasive compositions stand above the noise, touched by spoken word and devastating scream.
Somehow, Dragged Into Sunlight brings all this together in a single-tracked effort, neglecting a need to rush the listener into an inescapable wall of sound. There's an ebb and flow as
Terminal Aggressor II runs its course, climaxing in a truly rewarding fashion. Dragged Into Sunlight’s pain can be felt in volumes, warped by smelting feedback and inadequate riff descriptors.
