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Review & Video Premiere: The Asound, Impalement Arts

the asound impalement arts

The Asound, “Triple Saints” official video premiere

[Click play above to watch the premiere of The Asound’s video for ‘Triple Saints.’ Their second album, Impalement Arts, is out now on Rusty Knuckles Music.]

There’s a blistering, sandblasted sensibility to the noise rock The Asound have come to make, and though their beginnings nine years ago on their debut split (review here) and roughly concurrent 2010 self-titled EP (review here) were more in the vein of straightforward heavy rock, the North Carolinian trio-turned-four-piece have since taken a turn for the confrontational, and that seems to suit them in attitude as well as execution. As founders Chad Wyrick (guitar/vocals), Jon Cox (bass) and Michael Crump (drums) welcome guitarist David Easter, they take on an even fuller-sounding production than that heard on their 2017 split with Intercourse (review here), allowing the complete brunt of what they’re doing to make its impact felt. Impalement Arts is at least their second long-player, but the back catalog is nebulous over the last nine years with singles, EPs and splits and pressings through Cox‘s Tsuguri Records imprint making their way to the merch table in limited quantities.

Either way, it’s the most professional-sounding output they’ve had to-date, and while some of its songs go back at least five years — “Chief of Thieves” previously appeared on a 2014 split with Mark Deutrom (review here) — the clarity and breadth of production by Brandon Hamby at Dead Peasant Studio makes it all the more vital, right up to the Floor cover, “Loanin'” that caps side B of the 43-minute long-player. In that time, The Asound pack an intense 12 songs into Impalement Arts, and while the title-track and songs like “Pseudo Vein” do more than hint at some of the heavy rocking foundations of the band, even these moments are purposed into a whole that is brash and dynamic in kind, easily changing tempo and working into and out of winding progressions with an overarching threat of violence that’s right there at the outset of the chugging opener “Wolves Will Feed” and continues as a uniting factor throughout. It’s not that they’re void of melody — they’re not, and Wyrick‘s throaty vocals are quick to show that in the chorus of “Wolves Will Feed” — just that that melody comes with bruises.

Much to their credit, The Asound never come across as rushed throughout Impalement Arts, and as “Dead Rat Cinders” lunges forth with its initial roll and foreboding hey-anyone-remember-when-Mastodon-was-a-noise-band barbarism, the tension they create is a chest-tightening atmosphere at once engaging and disaffected. Still, they’re not out of control, and for having put the record to tape in three days, they sound positively poised as “Throne of Compulsion” winds its way into its first verse with an interaction between lead and rhythm guitars that resolves in a gritty staccato verse topped with Wyrick‘s gritty shouting. These first three tracks — “Wolves Will Feed,” “Dead Rat Cinders” and “Throne of Compulsion” — are all under four minutes long, but together make for a purposeful opening salvo that introduces not only the sound of Impalement Arts, the tones and general aggression of delivery, etc., but also the mood, which “Throne of Compulsion” subtly begins to expand.

the asound

There’s an underlying current of metal amid all the drunk-punk foundations in the songs, and while there’s lumber and plod fast and slow for just as long as you please, the structure of Impalement Arts is still positioned to engage the listener by bringing them gradually into the sphere of the band’s songwriting. “Throne of Compulsion” gives way to “Pseudo Vein” — both appeared on the band’s second self-titled EP in 2016 (review here), as did “Moss Man” still to come on side B — which flows easily at a more relaxed tempo across its five minutes, coming to a head late and feeding more or less directly into the instrumental title-track and the quicker “Triple Saints,” which strips down the approach of the initial trilogy to its sans-frills core and explosive core. It’s a fair enough ending for side A, and leaves the pummel to speak for itself, which it does all the more after the title-track, which is downright friendly in comparison.

The interlude that precedes “Moss Man” on side B is a trap. You turn the volume way up to hear what’s going on, and then all of a sudden Crump‘s drums kick in to puncture your eardrum. You win this round, The Asound. At just under five minutes, “Moss Man” is a highlight of Southern-style noise rock — I tag it as “Southern” a bit for the lead guitar that ensues and a bit because it reminds me of Lord — but while it departs for a long and nearly hypnotic instrumental stretch, it does return to its verse at the end. That’s a crucial structural shift, and “Commanding the Sword” follows with a tempo slowdown that suits the overall tonal largesse well and still carries some searing aspect to its soloing, this time pushing further out until the end as the band continue to screw with their own formula effectively.

“Chief of Thieves” is the longest inclusion at 5:36 and deep-dives into a willfully repetitive break that seems to build on what “Moss Man” was doing in terms of trance-induction, while providing Impalement Arts with a suitable culmination in its thickened and rumbling finish that makes the angularity of “Masters of the Mind” all the more of a blast — as though The Asound got the business out of the way so they could really let loose. Perhaps it’s an answer to “Triple Saints,” but either way, its blown-out push is a good time reward that the Floor cover “Loanin'” backs up in method and theme. There’s no bomb tone, but The Asound do well to bring the two-minute cut into the context of the rest of their album, and while I’m not sure they needed it after “Masters of the Mind,” neither is it detracting from Impalement Arts in any way, its long fade giving them the means to a graceful exit for a record that’s spent so much of its time being brazenly ungraceful. That contrast speaks to what has always been a strength of The Asound, which is the consciousness behind the physicality of their work. They know what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, and Impalement Arts delivers exactly the kind of punishment they intend.

The Asound, Impalement Arts (2018)

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Rusty Knuckles Music website

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