Album Review: REZN, Chaotic Divine
Bon voyage. Since the 2018 release of their well received second album, Calm Black Water, Chicago four-piece REZN have branched out across two at-least-semi-collaborative offerings. Last year, they issued Live at Electrical Audio, recorded at the famed Chicago studio in collaboration with post-hardcore heavy rockers Lume, and earlier 2020 brought Infected Ambient Works, a collection of 26 mostly-short, synth-focused atmospheric pieces, listed as a collaboration with Catechism, which is in fact a solo-project of REZN‘s own Spencer Ouellette, who in addition to synth also might be found handling percussion, sax or flute on a given track.
As one approaches the band’s third proper full-length, Chaotic Divine, clearly the lesson to take away from the last two years is that REZN — Ouellette alongside guitarist/vocalist Rob McWilliams, bassist/vocalist Phil Cangelosi and drummer Patrick Dunn — are branching out. And the consuming, untamed 64 minutes of the 11 songs they bring to this album bears that out, as throughout its span one might find McWilliams handling oud, Cangelosi a baglama or rainstick, and Dunn some off-kit percussion or a sitar in addition to Ouelette‘s array of keys/synth, sax, percussion and flute as noted above. All of this is factored into a backdrop of deep-running heavy riffing and psychedelic lumber, with the weighted-and-drifting “Emerging” setting the forward march on its way with vocal effects recalling earlier Monolord and a hypnotic final section that’s perhaps even more effective in drawing in the listener.
“Emerging” is both a foundation and a departure, and it comes grouped on side A with “Waves of Sand” and “Garden Green,” the former of which brings the first standout flourish of saxophone and a subtle build of tension over the course of its just-under-seven-minutes that approaches slow-space-rock freakout levels before the crushing tonality finally wakes up to stamp everything into dust. As payoffs go, that of “Waves of Sand” is nothing if not earned, but again, the subsequent comedown is no less exciting, and a cricket-chirping transition into “Garden Green” finds REZN experimenting with reggae undertones with an almost frightening smoothness before a side flip to “The Door Opens” seems to reset the pattern to where it began with “Emerging.” Gruff vocals, more direct riffing, massive, lumbering groove; familiar enough elements set to righteous purpose, they coincide with an effective psychedelic midsection, huge-sounding crashing finish and obscure samples (or something) at the end.
This is one of the many examples throughout Chaotic Divine of REZN taking established genre methods and making them their own. “The Door Opens” gives way to “Clear I,” the first of two interludes that build on the soundscaping the band has done as far back as “Pipe Dream” from their 2017 debut, Let it Burn (review here), but pushes farther, pulling out the drums in favor of a genuine sense of float that moves with windy synth into the sweeping launch of “Optic Echo.” Like “Waves of Sand” and the later, speedier “Scarab,” it is itself a standout that nonetheless feeds into and enhances the whole 2LP flow of which it is a part, drawing down to quiet silence with sax in conversation with subdued guitar ahead of the 10-minute “Mother/Forever Time” beginning side C with the arrival of McWilliams‘ oud and arguably Chaotic Divine‘s most effective stretch of heavy psychedelic ritualizing.
It is a wash that feels delicately crafted and organic just the same, gaining largesse in its midsection (aren’t we all?) and then gracefully receding in its second half into experimentalist ambience, assuring that the drums beginning “Inner Architecture” are duly grounding. With melodic vocals set over drifting verses offset by weighted push in the chorus, there are flashes of Mars Red Sky-style sweetness — around the 2:45-3:00 mark — but the central riff around which it’s based is almost pure Sleep once one digs past the surrounding elements. Not that one necessarily should, as those elements are essential in the quiet/loud tradeoffs that make “Inner Architecture” a particularly resonant hook instrumentally and structurally, fading to silence before the last side flip brings “Scarab,” the effect of which is like someone bursting into a smoke filled room and waving their arms around to clear the air.
The side D leadoff is without a doubt the fastest track on Chaotic Divine, and so distinguished by that, but it’s also a clinic in how to do stoner-doom drumming right, and though it’s only four minutes long, the function it serves is to add momentum just as the album is heading into its final movement. There’s still plenty of swirl to be had in the layers of soloing and riffs, but even amid the big finish, the swinging groove remains the priority, which is only fair heading into the cinematic drone of “Clear II.” Shorter than its earlier companion piece, the penultimate interlude serves as a fitting breather after “Scarab” and an intro for closer “The Still Center,” the main guitar progression of which follows a pattern set by Neurosis‘ “Reach” but, like other recognizable bits and pieces throughout, is set to individualized purpose by REZN in a way that makes it all the more a worthy finish.
And they end not with a grand overblown crash, but instead in that wash of melody that they’ve waded through so patiently throughout Chaotic Divine. The sax is there, the wandering guitar figure, the steady drums and bass and echoing vocals. It is an outward motion, but one could say the same of the whole record, and its sudden cutting short after coming quickly to a head at the very end gives the listener a palpable sense of being let go into the ether that the residual silence represents — a no less impressive finish for how conceptual it feels as relates to the entirety of what precedes.
Of molten intent and cross-subgenre execution, REZN offers a psychedelthickness that seems to be as much a sign of things to come as of its moment. It’s easy sometimes to think of a third album as being where a band finds itself in terms of sound and style, and if that’s what’s happening here as Chaotic Divine adds arrangement breadth and general narrative scope to what REZN did on their first two offerings, then all the better, but satisfying and engaging and fluid and as much of an achievement as they are, the explorations in these tracks still come across with an energy that feels nascent and speaks to the potential for more expansion to come. One can only hope that turns out to be so.
REZN, Chaotic Divine (2020)
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