Immortal Bird – Empress/Abscess

Did you ever read a review and smile at all of the praise, only to get to the score and wonder what in the hell happened in the meantime?  This actually occurred when this album here was on repeat at the homestead over the past few days.  We enjoy, sometimes, checking out what others have to say, including this one gang of idiots who shall never be named here because we refuse to give them existence beyond brief derision.  Said gang of idiots actually gave this a score lower than the writing seemed to indicate.  Further, can one take points away from an album that breaks so much tradition by complaining that it does so while prior lauding it for the same thing?  Irritating, and mind-boggling idiocy, to say the least.  Or the most, because that’s all that clan of fools is capable of, idiocy.  Funny that such a page refers to itself as snobbish when it’s more boorish, to be fair.  They wouldn’t be able to tell a good manchego if it was forced down their mouths while someone said this is a damn fine manchego eat it, go on, eat it it’s good.  Seriously, the word snob is used too liberally these days, that’s why, around here, we call ourselves autocrats, because we are single and supreme in the realm of elitism.  We only give good scores to the best, and we make sure our writing accounts for the numbers we toss about.

  

You’ve probably heard of Immortal Bird, or hopefully have, the Chicago quartet known for their groundbreaking and self-defining EP Akrasia, released in 2013.  Some bands just get it right from the moment they begin, and these four prove that, yet again (also that we can’t rhyme so well).  They’ve been called practically everything, and various, fruitless attempts at defining their existence has been made something of a hobby for idiots.  Some have said deathgrind, others, like Encyclopaedia Metallum, just totally gave up and said “death metal, yeah, that covers it, whatever.” At least said site admits it is below Immortal Bird.  Only in a single comment in our searching did we find someone that got it.  There’s no tagging to be done here, simply say “it sounds like Immortal Bird,” and you’ve covered yourself, because they are their own identity.

 

Empress/Abscess is a glimpse into the future, perhaps, or a god/goddess towards whom we all bow our pathetic lives to become more perfect.  Well, though, it should be stated around here that we are perfect, autocrats, after all, and that means, of course, we can completely understand a release like this and score it properly.  Immortal Bird command the winds, they swirl emotion together into a conglomerate of pure energy, tainted with anger, singed with love, rusted away with disgust.  Shifts abound to where genre is almost nonexistent, showing an amazing ability to alter chording from chaos to order, and turning the duality into its reverse.  Dissonance combined with harmony, negative with positive, this is the one true path.  Further, it’s almost a form of prayer, a full exposition of religious value for a religion that has yet to exist, but has as its godhead Immortal Bird.  The sheer amount of layering and textures to be found in this rather short release, including a splendid, languid piano line in “To A Watery Grave”, is simply amazing; when it flows through your body and opinions desire to spew from your mouth, you’ll either reduce your wording to the typical, and thus lose the meaning of Empress/Abscess entirely, or, like us, in merging with the divinity, you can do nothing more than babble nonsense, as the human body is simply not capable of expounding properly on its greatness because its power is from the beyond.  We tried here, as you see, but we failed, forgive us Immortal Bird, let our scoring of your album stand as a sufficient offering in place of our lack of literary skill.  We would say we’re unworthy, but even such wording is below you.  We remain in silence and awe.

 

Immortal Bird Official Facebook

Written by Stanley Stepanic

Immortal Bird: Empress/Abscess
Broken Limbs Recordings
5 / 5