This is exactly what I'm talking about when I use the word "heavy." This is exactly what I want, it's perfectly executed, and there isn't a single crack in the structure of these sounds. Nine of Saturday's hours were spent sifting through cluttered toys, clothes, and mail, so the last thing I felt like doing this morning was sorting through bullshit egos and inflated indulgences. So Seattle's Giza have again made my fuckin' day.
Following up 2012's stellar Future Ruins is the five-track I Am The Ocean, I Am The Sea, an instrumental half hour of beautifully-realized servings of crash and sustain. Absolutely nothing roadblocks the dense bruising bookended between I and V, slugging forward yet steadily descending to incredible depths. Crafting prophetic swirl and sprawl is no small task without the benefit of vocal promise and anguish, and to do so with such fleeting, gorgeous discord is thrusting Giza toward seasoned status requiring a second trip to the buffet line.
I and V act as a vice, leaving the album's thorax swollen and primed to explode. Molecular Tsunami pulses with thick grime, lacing timber with screeching themes shifting between the primitive and the progressive. With no shortage of stoner buzz and a perfect marriage of cascading drums and swirling guitars, this one's an absolute fucking delight. There's no denying it's as apocalyptic as the band assures, but this track puffs its chest and welcomes crashing slate as necessity rather than novelty.
Sustained pauses and grinding sludge rhythms characterize the desolate atmospheres of Interplanetary Cyclone. Fleeting across vast expanses and descending into a sea of fire, flames sporadically burst and this song, like its predecessor, begins completely dissolving into itself. Drawing Tar follows with longer-drawn churn, lurching with each passage toward dark intent. Laundry-hung licks cascade between genres, buzzing just beyond the steaming ditch. A deliciously choppy midpoint is highlighted by staggering drumwork, leading an elemental flicker that never fully snuffs out. The track's final death rattle seeks a true path, shifting and smoking toward an abrupt close.
Cemented within the spacey and the sad is a hovering sense of something much larger. Where vocals announce there's a wolf at your door, their absence provides a more unsettling sense of dread. Giza take our imaginations on a tour of sludge's lonely, cavernous corners. We're not sure if the demise is coming from beyond or within, but it's the exploration of those uncertainties that sets apart these sounds. I Am The Ocean, I Am The Sea marks a soaring, lumbering stride for a band that's somehow gotten us more than a little excited for the end of everything.
For fans of: Isis, Failure, Russian Circles
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