If you’ve ever heard a Minsk album, then you know the Chicago post-metal four-piece don’t do anything without it being packed tight. They slam more sounds into their songs than ever on their third full-length (second for Relapse), With Echoes in the Movement of Stone, offering a more varied take on the rich and darkly psychedelic crushing ambience that has become their signature sound over the course of these last several years and albums The Ritual Fires of Abandonment (2007) and Out of a Center Which is Neither Dead Nor Alive (2005).

Change can be felt particularly in the vocals of guitarist Christopher Bennett, who works more than isolated shouting into his arsenal on songs like opener “Three Moons” and later cut “Crescent Mirror.” Timothy Mead‘s keyboard work is also higher in the mix, lending a progressive dynamism to “The Shore of Transcendence,” which at 9:59 and with a plethora of mood and tempo changes, is practically an album in itself. Bassist/vocalist Sanford Parker, who has produced all three of Minsk‘s LPs (as well as records for Pelican when they were good, Yakuza, Nachtmystium and half of the Windy City), outdoes himself in both performance and in capturing the nuances in these songs. The building of tension has never been more confidently accomplished by the band as it is here.

Drummer Tony Wyioming is a big part of that accomplishment, taking his heralded tribal rhythms to new levels of complexity, speed and precision. In “The Shore of Transcendence,” beneath the chanting multi-part vocal harmonies, he makes his home jumping from tom to tom stopping only to crash a cymbal or five and propel the song forward. With Echoes in the Movement of Stone shows more emotional diversity than anything Minsk has done before, as the rumbling, feedbacking undercurrent of “Almira’s Premonition” demonstrates. Less visceral than past outings, but with more depth, the album is a crucial moment for the band and genre alike, definitively stating there’s more to this sound than just pulling a “lather, rinse, repeat” on Isis‘ Oceanic or Through Silver in Blood by Neurosis.

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Their appropriately-titled demo, The Demonstration 2009, may only be upwards of 11 minutes long, but New Jersey newcomer post-metal troupe Pharaoh (not to be confused with the Philly power metal band of the same name on Cruz Del Sur) raise some interesting questions about how fans and bands interact in 2009, and what effect accessibility has on the listening experience. The only way to get the two song release is to email the band at: pharaohcontact_@_gmail._com [underscores added to thwart spammers].

The other day when I pulled the self-made curtain in my bedroom aside to let some light in, I found a small robin had found its way in past the outside storm window, gotten trapped in between the screen and the window itself, and died. It lay on its back, legs up, very much dead. I’m still unclear as to how it got in there, and though its removal gave me a much-needed opportunity to open the window and vacuum some spider eggs that would have tortured me all throughout the summer months, I was hardly glad for the task. In the end, I took a bunch of paper towels, put an already mostly full garbage bag by my side and grabbed it while trying not to look at what I was doing. Like picking up a load of dog shit. The dog shit that only a couple weeks ago I’d have taken for an announcement of Spring.

As I listen to the churning machination of the opening riff to Pharaoh‘s “I Murderer, I,” that image of unintended cruelty and destruction sticks in my head in an almost disturbing way. Here I was, captor of this stupid creature, without even knowing it. I kept it just inches from my sleeping head until it starved to death and then disposed of it the same way I disposed of that leftover steak in the fridge. It’s a vicious process. That kind of hopelessness, that kind of brutality, is what I hear in the screams on The Demonstration 2009.

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I’ve only been to West Virginia once in my life; I was about 12 years old. Even at that tender, pubescent age, when hormones had me thinking of little other than boobies (so much has changed), I was able to look around and notice that it was the whitest place I’d ever seen. White people, everywhere. 95.99 percent Caucasian, according to the 2005 census as quoted on Wikipedia. It was one pale-ass state.

But these aren’t the rich white motherfuckers who made a rectal dartboard of our economy and stole our retirements out from under us to give themselves multi-million dollar bonuses. These are coal miners, who’ve been screwed over by the same powers that be since the days of the robber barons. They’ve hollowed out their beautiful stretch of Appalachia and have what exactly to show for it? Bosses with cash enough to get the best PR out of each and every mine collapse.

The inherent conflict of their home state and working man’s frustration is evident in the instrumental post-doom offerings of Huntington, West Virginia trio Hyatari (all white). Originally brought to prominence with the helping hand of a 2005 reissue of their self-released 2004 album, The Light Carriers by Earache Records subsidiary Code:Breaker, the band soon found themselves in similar straits as labelmates Figure of Merit, Abandon and Zatokrev. When the label project went under, so did they. Hyatari were off the map.

With the late 2008 release of They Will Surface — sounds as much like a warning as an assurance, doesn’t it? — Hyatari reemerged through Caustic Eye Productions with six extended suns that never set; each track droning its way into and out of and back into oblivion like sheets of universe crashing into each other. It is hypnotic and disturbing.

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Tradition and fascist madman/$20 bill model Andrew Jackson hold that the spoils go to the victor, and it seems Ottawa‘s intensely atmospheric metallers Buried Inside agree; new album Spoils of Failure (Relapse Records) is a dark, bleak and oppressive work the emphasis of which seems to be on embodying the titular failure in a bizarrely successful way. Another longtime dictum is that artists can never succeed, only fail better. If that’s the case — and I wholeheartedly believe it is — then Buried Inside fail pretty damn well here.

A lyrical treatise focused on the flaws of the society which is apparently crumbling all around us more every day, Spoils of Failure provides the kind of vague and poetic analysis that could either be brilliant or pointless depending on how much thought you want to put into reading it. That’s not to call the lyrics dumb, if anything they’re over-intellectualized, but as much of a focus as there is on verbiage, you can enjoy the record without knowing the words. Hell, I did until I looked at the liner notes. It can happen.

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It should be noted that every time I type “Sanford,” I automatically put an extra ‘d’ in the middle, so if one shows up here, apologies all around.

Here’s the latest from Blabbermouth, who dutifully cut and pasted a Relapse press release:

Chicago/Peoria, Illinois quartet MINSK has entered Volume Studios with the band’s Sanford Parker producing to begin recording its third full-length album, “With Echoes In The Movement Of Stone”, for a summer release via Relapse Records.

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