22.6. INTER ARMA / BRIQUEVILLE |

Richmond’s INTER ARMA, reigning masters of the slow build, continue to trace a distinctly ambitious trajectory through modern metal. Their impulses tend toward the epic, but never bloat; they meld several styles — doom, sludge, and hard psych — without coming off like dilettantes. This newest full-length, Sulphur English, finds them mining deeper in the proggy organic doom fields that made both Paradise Gallows and Sky Burial so thrilling while expanding further the on the psych-folk strain that made those albums’ peaks seem so lofty.

Few metal bands have ever made such effective use of acoustic instruments in truly heavy environments as INTER ARMA do; the acoustic guitar that stitches “Stillness” together is as effective as any overdriven bass; a two-minute gloomy piano-and-feedback piece titled “Observances of the Path” rolls out the carpet for “The Atavist’s Meridian,” an album highlight that rides a gigantic, roomy drum sound into realms akin to a murkier Paradise Lost, a more aggressive Om, and a dreamier, more stoned Kylesa all playing together at once.

Few bands make music as engrossing as INTER ARMA; their lengthy, almost meditative songs rumble patiently forward until you’re ready to get thrown off a bridge — and then they throw you, with great force. –

Words by John Darnielle
interarma.bandcamp.com

BRIQUEVILLE is a band shrouded in mystery. On stage, they create an instrumental mantra of spooky guitars, modified field recordings and eery sampled chants.
These meditative build-ups, based on the perseverant element of repetition, are contrasted with and ripped apart by sudden, unforeseeable outbursts of the purest and sheerest heaviness.

After 2017’s dazzling instrumental opus „II“, the Flemish 5-piece finally return with their 3rd studio album, one of the first real pandemic-albums to be released on Pelagic. The band members had to finish the album in separation, which worked out better than they had initially expected: the forced distance allowed them to take distance not only to each other, but also towards their own song material. Some pieces grew larger than originally intended, others were stripped down to the essentials and reinvented.