Originally written by Dean Brown.
While most of the music you hear on a daily basis can be easily slotted into neat categories for descriptive purposes—and nine times out of ten it is done at the chagrin of the artist—some bands, because of the way they blend different styles, defy easy definition. Chicago five-piece The Atlas Moth fall into that oxymoronic category of unclassifiable artists, with the band’s past albums being clumsily labelled as “sludge” or “stoner.” And therein lays the problem with set genre tags: they’re way too restrictive for bands like The Atlas Moth who have such a vast sonic palette to work with and who weave an elaborate tapestry of moods, textures and styles together.
Granted, sludge and stoner rock does feature prominently in The Atlas Moth’s music—the title of their 2013 compilation Master of Blunt Hits says it all. But their intriguing 2009 debut, A Glorified Piece of Blue-Sky, and its more enhanced follow-up, An Ache for the Distance (2011), went beyond what those genres titles suggest, as atmospheric metal shone through a prism of bluesy pyschedelia and post-rock, the radiant glow of which produced a distinct colour of its own.
A large part of The Atlas Moth’s labyrinthine musical base, on top of which the band’s three-pronged vocals—Ihsahn-esque shrieks and deep, echoing chants—converge, is the seamless utilization of three guitars that overlap, intertwine, accent, and, oddly, create space.
Andrew Ragin, David Kush and Stavros Giannopoulos (Chrome Waves, Twilight) have distinctive playing styles that complement each other. Their use of effects pedals adds further depth to layer after tangled layer of guitars which forms The Atlas Moth’s syrupy and cavernous sound when amalgamated with the abovementioned spectrum of vocals, Ragin’s keyboards, the bubbling distortion of Alex Klein’s basslines and the drumming of Dan Lasek.(Lasek replaced Anthony Mainiero, who played with the band from their formation in 2008 up until 2013.)
Such an involved approach to building a wall of sound always has the potential to become a nondescript pile of gelatinous musical goo. But the structural details and songcraft The Atlas Moth continues to hone holds the clarity of ideas and individuality of each instrument central. As you would expect if you’ve paid attention to this band from the beginning, The Atlas Moth’s third full-length and second consecutive for Profound Lore, The Old Believer, continues to refine this rather exceptional exemplar of styles and arrangements.
Ingeniously packaged with a cover that changes color when contact is made with water, only to return to its original shade once dried (an idea lifted from Led Zeppelin’s sepia-soaked In Through The Out Door artwork and superbly executed by artist Ryan Clark), the alchemy at play here carries through to the 55-minutes of absorbing music. With Ragin producing, the sound is so balanced, with every detail aching to be explored through headphones across multiple listens. Definitely an album for the audiophile, The Old Believer doesn’t shout its every secret on first encounter; rather, you need to invest time to actually listen and absorb to reap the full reward—which flies in the face of the increasing need for instant gratification that this modern world demands.
That’s not to say this album is difficult or overly complex—The Atlas Moth have actually shortened song lengths and crafted sensible, dynamic structures—but more that because there is a lot going on in terms of layers on enveloping tracks like “Sacred Vine” and “Hesperian,” so the finer details, which are just as essential and interesting as the thundering rhythms and serpentine guitar interplay, are hidden from plain view.
In contrast to the exploration aspects of the album overall, The Old Believer also houses some of the band’s most graspable/catchy vocal melodies yet, and when the band lock into a groove, as the ending of the imperial “Blood Will Tell” will attest, the music will rattle you with its serious strength. Such effortless ability to transform powerful metallic energy into iridescent melody and vice versa is an alchemy only known by a handful of bands at the heavier end of the sphere.
Three albums deep into their existence and with each album better than the last, the prophets of post-metal known as The Atlas Moth have finally mastered the dark arts.
