REVIEW: Malevich - Under a Gilded Sun

Experimental and extreme metal bands are drawing on an ever growing multitude of musical influences, and seem to be becoming less beholden to purist ideals of the past. Yet, however jarring, to navigate the mysterious cartography of algorithmic searches, an online presence still requires a selection of nouns and adjectives to portion them off into their overflowing categories. With a diversity of creative influences, Atlanta-based band Malevich have leveraged this symptom of modern music making. Using a litany of sub-genre headings, they help us define their sound and ultimately, drawing us in, including; post-death metal influenced blackened screamo sludge, death grind and power ambient. Phew. Malevich’s forthcoming LP, Under a Gilded Sun, is a continuation of this cauldron of styles. Neatly and deftly layered on top of each other, it explores a dark and bubbling world of disaffected, anti-authoritarian, grimy discordance. 

Over the past decade, Malevich’s commitment to intensity and ear shattering sounds in early records like Our Hollow and Only the Flies felt like a release of growling, dark matter, seemingly pouring out of a rip in some demonic dimension of sub-space. Proudly anti-fascist, they have been ever ready to devour the capitalist experiment and ideologically corrupt systems, across the board. Now, with Under a Gilded Sun, they have made this intent crystal clear, stating “Malevich wanted it to be known that they weren’t making extreme music that was void of purpose”. They seem to take personal affront to the scene they see around them, “The lack of teeth found on the thoughtful side of extreme music is concerning; hordes of reverb-soaked faux-black metal bands tremolo picking for the sake of selfish art and not anger”.

The record opens immediately into a cacophony of blast beats and a guitar chiming, all draped in fuzz, on the first track, ‘Blossom in Full Force’. A raspy straining voice rallies out at us, with the lyrics, “Existing in absolute discordance. Caught in the perpetual tension between atoms and wholes”, acutely describing exactly how this intense barrage of an opening feels. Drawing out a melodic line with layers of synth and guitar, as the grasping and pained vocals continue, the combination of dirt digging screams and beats, with the eerie atmospheric drifts, produce a strange, but thoroughly enjoyable flow. Malevich introduce three different vocalists from their multi-tasking four piece - Connor Ray, Sasha Schilbrach-Cole, Daniel De-Simone. This dissonant harmonic vocal layering is a mainstay through the LP, adding invaluable texture and depth. A communion of lost souls crying out by the songs close of “No one exists on their own”, and their resistance to the alienation of corporate individualism.

Hitting us right in the centre of the album is an unexpected tonal shift, its quiet, its gentle, its unexpected, and so it feels, just as drastic. ‘Illusion Never Changed’ is a clear, distortion-free lament for the earth, or society, or freedom, or all three and more. We are softly carried along, until finally the vocalist can’t hold back any more, screaming back at us, filling the song with a sort of bubble of noise. From here, we jump back into the clawing nature of the previous tracks, a standout being ‘A Sun that only Sets’, full of seriously sweet guitar melodies, from Josh McIntyre and Ray, momentarily invoking a sort of Velvet Underground feel. Depicting a sonic landscape that undulates through gnarly sci-fi vistas and analogue vintage horror, the music drops out several times, only to swoop back in with those post-something guitars, jangling through the gritty haze and guttural death vocals. As it descends into one of Malevich’s well crafted, dissonant rambles, it shakes off the confusion and into a sort of mechanically repetitive ‘fuck you’.

The LPs final track is ‘Supine, Under the Gilded Sun’. Atmospherically stomping and smashing through the life force of a cymbal and onwards through a mush of synths, until falling away into a distillation of minimal riffing and singing. Clarity is the wrong word, as there is still grit soaked through it, but you feel it cut through murk. In the train-chug-like rhythm we pendulate between almost soothing, singing, and the forcing out of a mass, of dark, scratchy, pain. As this final track, and the LP, draws to a close, a wall of distortion slowly engulfs it, until all has dropped away into a sparkling, pulsing synth. With a sense of floating through infinity and beginning to lose their transmission, you might contemplate if you had accidentally tuned into someone's swan song. There is something deeply pensive here, combined with a sense of toil and struggle, both ideologically and also in pushing their creative boundaries - "As the costs rise ever higher, my sweat as feed for another".

As their creativity evolves and it intersects with radical, progressive politics, even when the message seems bleak, it is where the album feels at its most successful. Under a Gilded Sun may be crying out for justice, but it has a purpose, an essential component, if metal’s confines, and its gatekeepers, are potentially dissolving. What if the only way to go, is unavoidable progress…

Score: 7/10

Under A Gilded Sun will be released on August 22nd via Church Road Records.

Words: Alana Madden

Photos: Malevich