Immortal Bird — Empress/Abscess

Hats off to Invisible Oranges. Along with their stream of Cave of Swimmers’ Reflection EP earlier this year, which turned out to be one of my favorite releases of 2015 so far, they’ve done it yet again with a stream of Empress/Abscess, the debut full-length by Chicago four-piece Immortal Bird. This record is jockeying with Vattnet Viskar’s stellar Settler for the best album of 2015 thus far in my book.

There are lots of things to love about this LP, but first and foremost is the stylistic variation. There are elements of hardcore, grind, black metal, mathcore and progressive metal strewn about here, all inhabiting the same musical space without sounding even remotely forced or artificial. The only thing I can compare it to is hearing a classic album or band for the first time — it just feels important without even trying. The arrangements, moods, and genres all work in tandem like a set of gears; a shift from d-beat to black metal brings a melancholy, tremolo-picked lead down the middle of the stereo spectrum off of which other parts begin to grow like vines, culminating in an Opethian climax that supersedes anything that band has done in some time.

The instrumentation isn’t quite as virtuosic as the style might imply, but it doesn’t need to be. With a couple of marginal guitar slip-ups and a production style that generally errs on the side of doing more with less, it reminds me of the vibe you get from Mastodon’s Remission: that of a band that knows exactly what it’s doing musically but still projects a take-no-prisoners attitude. Vocalist Rae Amitay is a bit of weak link in the chain, with a pretty samey-sounding delivery that, while powerful, isn’t quite dynamic enough to match the rest of the music.

There are some smallish flaws on this outing that I have a feeling will likely be fixed with future releases, but that nevertheless affect the listening experience here. For one, this LP is a tad rough around the edges in terms of transitions within songs, track lengths, and endings. To a Watery Grave terminates with a fantastic new part that just repeats until a fade-out, truncating a great song with seemingly little reason. Sycophant is overly straightforward and underdeveloped relative to the other songs on the album. Closer And Send Fire uses up the back end of its track length with a noise outro, a tactic that I thought had mercifully gone out of style after it was abused in the mid-2000s.

These relatively minor issues aside, this is a mind-blowingly creative and highly listenable release from an act that just became one of my favorite new bands. Goddamn this thing is good. 9/10.

Empress/Abscess comes out today on Broken Limbs Recordings. Stream it over at Invisible Oranges and buy it here.