Chaos, confusion and dissonance all wrapped up in a well-constructed and punishing package. And that’s just the first 30 seconds of the first track, “Through the Veins,” from German hardcore sludge trio Abest‘s latest effort, Molten Husk! This is an 11-song melee that’s as disorientating as it is aggressive—a collection of mostly short tunes that rarely follow a well-worn path.
Molten Husk will be Abest’s third full-length release and second for Moment of Collapse Records. It finds the band—Patrick (bass), Joscha (guitar/vocals), Rezy (drums)—pushing forward both sonically and material-wise and challenging themselves and listeners alike with its relentless, unsettling approach. Like its predecessor, Bonds of Euphoria, the record was recorded by Jan Oberg (Downfall Of Gaia, Deathrite) at Hidden Planet Studio in Berlin. It will be released on August 19, and can be preordered here.
Here’s what Patrick had to say about the new album:
“We started writing the songs for Molten Husk shortly after our last full-length, Bonds of Euphoria, was released in late 2019. We couldn‘t play many shows to support the record because of the world wide pandemic, so we decided to use our time to write something new. Bonds of Euphoria already was a progression from our early material—the songs were shorter, more dissonant and more challenging to play. With Molten Husk we are taking another huge step away from the typical post-metal blueprint that you know from bands like Neurosis. That goes hand in hand with a personal progression as individuals. Some of us moved to other cities, got new jobs and left behind some dead weight we carried along for years. Molten Husk kinda sums all that up, alongside [the] feelings of unease everyone had during the past two years of pandemic and even before. We also tried to break out of [previous] habits with the new songs. You can still hear where we come from in [tracks like] “Into a Mirrored Hall,” but on the other side you have tracks like “Cognitive Empathy” or “Rendition Of Truth“ that are a lot more impulsive and chaotic than everything you‘ve ever heard from us. Some people say that they like our older stuff much more than the new songs, but writing the same song over and over again is not what we want to do. We may sound different than we did in 2014 but that‘s the way things go. What you hear on Molten Husk is what we believe Abest should sound like in 2022; you can accept that or just put on the same Neurosis record you [have been] listening to for the past two decades.”
