INSECT ARK

INSECT ARKs Album „The Vanishing" besteht aus sechs Sound-Monolithen, die Düsternis, Epik, aber auch Hoffnung versprühen. Ein besonderes Alleinstellungsmerkmal im instrumentalen Doom des Duos sind vor allen Dingen die Lapsteel-Gitarrenklänge von Bandgründerin Dana Schechter.

The great highlight of Insect Ark's present moment is this beast of a record. The Vanishing can be roughly described as a sort of more psychedelic instrumental Neurosis, a comparison which is not made lightly.

Insect Ark play the kind of metal that you'd see performed at a museum. This electric guitar-less duo consists of frequent M. Gira collaborator Dana Schechter on bass, lap steel and synths, with former SubRosa drummer Andy Patterson on drums. That pedigree should help clue you in as to what you're in for with The Vanishing: some-thing very tasteful, very heavy and very bleak.

Schechter's return now with The Vanishing finds Insect Ark at its most potent. With drummer Andy Patterson (ex-SubRosa) joining on this venture, the duo performs a sickening descent to a hallucinogenic abyss… desolate, crafting obscure desert-like sceneries with sparse lead work, or horrifying moments of ambient dread that slithers and moves in circular motifs. "The Vanishing" drives this message straight to the heart, with its fantastic bends that stretch reality itself.

The Vanishing is doom-trodden and angular and creepy and mystical in all the right ways. I’m calling it “horror” metal not because it would work well as a horror movie soundtrack (it just might), but because it really instills that anxious discomfort which, counterintuitively, translates into an enjoyable but tense listen.

At some point Insect Ark will hit the redline for sonic unsettling and brilliance in experimentation. Captured by engineer Colin Marston (Dysrhythmia, Krallice), The Vanishing’s greatest strength is the way they manage to eschew doom’s eerie or any kind of post-metal brain-numbing formulas by injecting a calculated and defiant Neurosis type of aggression and unrelenting intensity, with a welcome tinge of melody on their dynamic brutal soundscape.

This band is a revelation you have reason to doubt, whether it's real or not. The musical fantasies that come from the Insect Ark workshop can be described as dark dreams that paralyze you at night. Not so much in horror as in the incredible possibilities that open before your eyes. You do not know where reality ends and suppressed lust begins, which you prevent from giving free passage. In a word, a dark splendor that is hard to resist. Better to succumb, no matter what it costs.

Insect Ark’s The Vanishing is the darkest, most unsettling metal record I’ve heard this year - with jarring, unsettling sound effects and atmospherics that constantly jostle the senses, preventing the listening experience from ever settling down into a sense of stasis. Insect Ark are at once a sum of their parts and something entirely different, which is one of the highest compliments I can ever pay a band, and Colin Marston’s characteristically clear but raw production ensures all of that is ri

“They’ve basically dissolved into the ether, their spirit. It’s kind of more about that than the literal thing of the ocean, but it’s something that’s been in me for my whole life. This feeling that you just can’t forget that we’re here right now, and this is really a struggle for all of us to recognize because life is short, but it’s also long, and it’s easy to forget. We’re not immortal, and we tend to forget that.”

The Vanishing feels cavernous, making you feel small and on edge; it’s very easy to disappear into it. Different flashes of unsettling moments and uncomfortable feelings slink through your mind. There’s a discomforting violence to much of the music that touches you deeply. It’s quite rare and incredible.