A forboding mire of dark synthesizers welcome us to Come the Thaw’s beautifully meloncholic landscape. The ominous drone is only allowed to build briefly before being pierced by a sharp inhalation and a breathy, unsure question:
…How…how will you ever find me now? When your wound is faded, and it’s lost its sound?
As Lorraine Rath and Jessica Way’s hauntingly serene voices swim circles around one another and the steady ambience both, I realized I was listening to the most heartfelt and crushingly depressing album 2012 has thus far offered.
Rath’s bass lines begin to drive the song as the keys slowly die and album opener Ruined Ground continues onward, steadily joined by carefully measured drum work and fleeting guitar notes that seem to gracefully waltz around the other instruments. In familiar Worm Ouroboros fashion, the band builds a spectacularly gentle procession before becoming truly heavy… but Come the Thaw approaches that heavy from a completely different angle than the band’s doom-filled S/T release. Things never really reach the crushing weight of Worm’s last album, whose murky depths drew many an apt Asunder comparison. For a band who have thus far tooled themselves around that transition between fragile beauty and ass-kicking doom and sludge riffs, you’d think that significantly downplaying that approach would hold this album back, but I will happily go on the record as saying this: Come the Thaw doesn’t need it.
Read the rest of the review after the jump!
The band has managed to completely escape the formulaic trap that many groups walking the same tightrope fall victim to, replacing the consistent soft sections that give way to monumental riffage with Aesop’s masterful hands behind the drum kit, his distinct jazz influence providing the basis for a more aggressive intermediate playing style than we’ve seen from Worm before. The fills in particular are responsible for a significant portion of the punch once things get kicked up a notch – there’s an ever-present tension whose occasional release comes close to straying into Ludicra territory at a few points before being reigned back in. Miss Way still provides more than ample raw emotive power throughout the album, her brittle guitar work echoing as briefly as ripples emanating outward from the disturbed surface of a glassy pool. However, it is on the tracks When We Are Gold and Withered that the guitar really shines – where that familiar encompassing distortion drop slithers and reels around the bass reliably driving the song home.
Speaking of jazz influence – this album is absolutely rife with it. From the way the bass provides the only constant backbone for the drums and guitar to listlessly dance around to the mostly cymbal driven and brush heavy drumming style, Come the Thaw would seem to be just as much at home on Blue Note as in the diverse Profound Lore catalog.
Style and mechanics aside, this is one of the heaviest emotional burdens an album has forced me to bear in order to listen to it in quite some time. Come the Thaw’s power struck me the hardest on a long 2am drive back to Los Angeles through winding and deserted stretches of fog-choked freeways. That eerie, familiar feeling of early morning desolation coupled with the unending rundown industrial complexes that seemed to stretch off into the fog in every direction provided a powerful and fitting visual accompaniment to such a bleak and otherworldly soundtrack. Every ephemeral note, elegant vocalization and minute cymbal strike carries such an intentional, fervid weight with it – I promise you this album will find that one vulnerable string tucked away deep within your steely heart and pluck it relentlessly for its entire run time.
Come the Thaw fittingly drops on this year’s Vernal Equinox, and while this year is still in its infancy in terms of music releases, this is most definitely an early front-runner for many AOTY lists down the road.
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