Abstracter – Wound Empire
Boy, these guys are persistent as all hell. That’s a lot of persistence, if you didn’t know, using the word hell with anything is like ‘a lot’ but it sounds more kvlt. And this persistence clearly came from a need to purge the soul, because when we first met Abstracter almost a year ago, we didn’t necessarily have entirely nice things to say. But in spite of any negativity, it was clear to us that they knew what they were doing, they just hadn’t done it yet. They hadn’t done the deed, did the done, didn’t the did done. And after that time, they swore to us, on numerous occasions, they would make amends, they would become the Abstracter we desired them to be. So, imagine our excitement when they bombarded us with PMs on Facebook a million or so times with word on their new one, Wound Empire. We lamented the last time we heard these guys because the title Tomb of Feathers was just so ripping in its essence, but it ended up being a literal translation. Here, however, you will most certainly leave with many wounds, and an empire will be built from the scars.
This artwork here also seems to better capture what Abstracter is about, it leaves no doubt this album is important. You have an overlay of geometry on top of a world of black and white degradation. It’s like combining decay with the endless permanence of machine, both fading, integrated, neither more dominant that the other. As the Latin on the back of the album reads, “A fronte praeciptium, a tergo lupi,” or in our pig tongue of English, “a precipice in front, wolves behind,” sometimes translated to “between a rock and a hard place.” Sadly the latter lacks the meaning of the former, and the former is what this album is all about, it’s about an unsurmountable trial with teeth and claws tearing at the flesh with which you attempt to climb away. Luckily, this difficult task was taken up by no less than seven different labels in three different formats. That typically, in the world of the underground, means “album is good.” Pure truth. Distribute, spread, decimate minds. Let us gain passage to the empire.
Wound Empire places the listener before a great, blackened fog when it begins, in the form of expansive feedback. Slashes of light break through some of the darkness, leading you on and on, spreading before your eyes a ruined wasteland. Abstracter is like the wind that blows all of that haze away, laying bare the boundless qualities of their sound. These guys have come a long way from their last one. Their sound has finally achieved what it needed, it balances a misty production murk with the same masculine quality they displayed before, which we mentioned was without the beards. This is not superficial, false power, nor is it a bulky sweater hiding sunken, dripping flesh. No beards necessary, this is clearly visible in veins right under the skin, and the skin is taught, supple, and rigid as all hell from tearing open the rocks of their previous tomb. These tracks go some serious distance, as well, testing the mettle of the better of us, and proving Abstracter can create a splendid sense of grimy, melancholic development while dragging the listener over the charred and sharpened stones fragmenting the bleak landscape of Wound Empire. It’s solidly accessible throughout, developing, draping your soul in the bleak, and then picking you up by the arms and tossing you into a chasm. Really spectacular stuff, and we’re glad they annoyed the piss out of us to listen to it.
Written by Stanley Stepanic
Abstracter: Would Empire
7 Degrees Records, An Out Recordings, Church of Fuck, Fragile Branch, Sentient Ruin Laboratories, Vendetta Records, Shove Records
4.8 / 5
