Review & Full Album Stream: Varego, Epoch
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on October 10th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
[Stream Varego’s Epoch in full by clicking play above. Album is out today, Oct. 10, on Argonauta Records.]
It’s not always easy to find, but for each tempest that Italian atmospheric sludge rockers Varego create on the six tracks of their second full-length, Epoch, there is a calm center at the core. That is, while their material offers a veneer of chaos, they never let go of an underlying sense of control, and whether it’s the metal influence that shows up late in the guitar work on “Swarms” or the closing “Dominion,” the earlier Ufomammut-style cosmicrush of the prior-issued single “Phantasma,” or the progressive impulses that seem to be at play there and beneath the churn of “The Cosmic Dome,” the Argonauta Records release succeeds in conveying a diversity of influence on a cohesive, heavy and intriguingly opaque package.
Like Varego‘s 2012 debut, Tumultum — they were a five-piece at the time, they’re now the foursome of bassist/vocalist Davide Marcenaro guitarists Alberto Pozzo and Gero Lucisano (also the head of Argonauta) and drummer Simon Lepore — the prevailing impression on first listen is one of strange immersion. This is thanks in no small part to a heavy effects treatment on Marcenaro‘s vocals, but that semi-psychedelic, spacious echo, in combination with a range of guitar soundscapes, winds up doing a lot of the work of tying Epoch‘s manageable 36-minute run together. It is an album with a sense of presentation more than pretense, but as the sparse guitar build of opener and longest track (immediate points) “Alpha Tauri” gives way to the ensuing rush that sounds something like Mastodon beamed in across several lightyears’ of interstellar signal decay, it’s clear Varego are up for a bit of exploration as well.
As to where that exploration takes them, they seem to display some measure of self-awareness of the journey they’re on. To wit, titles like “Alpha Tauri,” “Flying King,” “The Cosmic Dome,” and even “Dominion” — not to mention the otherworldly mastery conveyed through the album’s cover art, objectification notwithstanding — speak to elements of space, of moving from one place to the next, of something grander than the human sphere, and the music within backs that up with a fervent hypnosis that carries through as “Alpha Tauri” shifts directly into “Phantasma,” which likewise bleeds into “Flying King.”
Bringing the bass forward in the mix gives Epoch an immediate strike of heft, and sets up the dynamic of the buried vocals and the far-out guitar work of Pozzo and Lucisano, but it might be Lepore holding the songs together ultimately. “Flying King” finds him cycling through fills as the guitars and vocals stretch themselves to and beyond oblivion, and though it’s the shortest cut on the album at 4:44, and among the more straightforward, particularly after the thrust of “Phantasma,” from its beginning keyboard flourish to its capping wash of noise, it seems to be the drums providing that center around which the rest of the track swirls — though in this case, that center is anything but calm.
Each of the three songs that follow, “The Cosmic Dome,” “Swarms” and “Dominion,” lead the listener further along a path of consuming bleakness. One finds tortured shouts echoing behind furious riffing on “The Cosmic Dome,” and with the somewhat extended droning intro to that song, it all the more gives the feeling of having shifted from one side to another, side A to B, even in a linear (digital/CD) format. Reinforcement arrives as “Swarms” launches with its slow-Slayer nodding lead line and ping ride and continues to unfurl more downer vibes in the ensuing post-metallic build, increasing in tempo before receding again to a calm and somewhat morose contemplation across a long fade where even the snare drum is coated in reverb.
Like much of the album before it, this is a moment of grayed-out psychedelia, and that vibe carries into the finale “Dominion.” If this is the place to which Epoch has been leading, it’s an alternate dimension of far-ranging sludge and space-metallic thrust, marked out by its build and the rousing finish to which it progresses, the vocals holding all the while to the aforementioned sense of control that has underscored Varego‘s work across this massive but still efficiently-executed span.
At the end of “Dominion,” that seems to be exactly what Varego have established over this strange, sometimes confusing sonic territory. They are fully at home in it. They make it their own. They twist it to suit their purposes on a given track, in a given expression. That they’d develop further into their own sound on a second album four years after their debut isn’t necessarily surprising, but the progressive vision of sludge they present on Epoch that’s neither lacking atmosphere nor purely derivative of post-metal only becomes more satisfyingly individualized on repeat listens, which speaks even more of the band having fully realized the impressive scope of their intentions.
