Let’s get the massive, whopping, unavoidable disclaimer out of the way first: Immortal Bird is a new band featuring none other than former Last Rites staffer Rae Amitay. I also know Rae personally and consider her a friend, so please do feel free to take whatever words may follow with the appropriately sized grain of salt. That said, Akrasia packs a rather considerably large wallop, and I’m reasonably certain I’d feel the same way if I had no clue who was involved in its creation. But now, on to the good stuff.
Bands in which the drummer plays a lead songwriting role – and particularly if the drummer is also the singer – often demonstrate a heightened skill at placing the vocals in rhythmically interesting patterns that complement – rather than pull against – the rest of the song’s rhythmic base. Plenty of names spring to mind: Absu, Deceased, Autopsy, and now Immortal Bird. One reason for this is likely pragmatic: I imagine if you’re trying to pull double-duty singing and drumming, it’s trickier to do complicated patterns with both at the same time. Another reason, though, might be the percussionist’s revenge: so often relegated to the supporting role, when a drummer takes active control, she can craft songs that more readily demonstrate her skills and inventiveness, perhaps by getting the vocals out of the way of interesting fills, or by barking a vocal cadence that mimics an earlier drum rhythm.
The pronoun choice is deliberate, of course, as Amitay provides both vocals and drums for Immortal Bird (though she will be yielding drum duty for live shows), and spearheads songwriting along with guitarist Evan Berry. Still, Akrasia isn’t just worth your time because it’s an interesting exercise in reappropriating inter-band dynamics; it’s worth your time because in four songs it politely ignores any sense of musical restriction while at the same time earnestly committing itself to the noble goal of churning your puny body against the whetstone of its own urgency. Immortal Bird sometimes recalls bands like Withered or Black Anvil in the way they seem happy to snatch whichever bits of thrash, death metal, hardcore, black metal, and good old-fashioned heavy metal seem necessary to make their point at any given moment.
In fact, these songs don’t really make their point; they insist on it. The bridge section of “Spitting Teeth” pulls off some neat melodic death metal flourishes while the verses batter with all the subtlety of a brick wall. On “Ashen Scabland,” Berry trades passages of swarming Deathspell Omega-descended guitar with straight-ahead, busted-lip, broken-toothed throttling. The concluding coda of the latter song – approximately the last forty seconds – is corrosive and vital, equal parts feral and emotionally fraught. Elsewhere, the 5/4 opening meter of “Akratic Seminar” gives the song a nervy edge, like someone attempting to waltz while juggling a live grenade. John Picillo’s bass is particularly important here, an insistent tether against a gathering storm.
But for all the compositional smarts and nuance on display throughout the rest of this brief EP, it’s Akrasia’s closer “The Pseudoscientist” that hits the absolute hardest, pulling out an absurdly massive half-time thrash riff that, no joke, has induced involuntary headbanging every single time I’ve heard it. In the car, in the kitchen, sitting quietly by myself – doesn’t matter: instant neck-thrash. On Akrasia, Immortal Bird sound restless, driven, hungry, and impatient. The diversity of styles on display should be seen thus not as an inability to decide on a single method, but as an unwillingness to be hampered by strict genre templates.
This means I have honestly no idea what future Immortal Bird material might sound like, but I have a reasonably good estimate as to how it will sound like whatever it wants to sound like: completely, and with impressive force of will. These four songs aren’t a statement but a promise, and they’re not an answer but a question. They’re a teleology without a telos: when we get there, we will have gotten there.
