Melbourne, Australia’s The World at a Glance will release their third album, The Longest Shadow Can Only Recede, through Crucible on Sept. 1. I’ll confess outright it’s my first exposure to the band, whose style is an engrossing meld of post-hardcore, sludge, art rock and various extreme metals, and that’s before you get into the ambient synth textures, the violin, the multiple guest singers showing up, etc., across the seven included tracks on the circa-40-minute outing. As cuts like “Moth,” “The Longest Shadow Can Only Recede” and “See” demonstrate, the band — listed here as Scott Mclatchie (guitar/vocals/synth/some bass), Claire Westover (vocals, violin, some bass), and Jack Naughton (vocals/drums/percussion/synth/some other bass); and yes, I know that’s three people and there are four pictured above; you use what you’ve got — do not at all shy away from a heavy barrage when it’s called for, and there are moments where they have just as much in common with an act like Darkest Hour as with whatever barky, weighted avant garde comparison you’d like to pull out of your ass while also positioning themselves as kin to the floaty post-rock of Sleepmakeswaves, We Lost the Sea, maybe some Swans if you want to count influences of influences, and so on, flashing instrumental hints of SubRosa-style string-laced crush with Westover‘s violin featuring at the forefront of a mix running deep enough to account for the spaciousness in the final fade of closer “Endlessly.” There is, to put it another way, a lot going on.

Opener “Moth” (video premiering below) helps shape the proceedings with a minute of patient drone at the start met by tense strummed guitar and violin, drums, and clean-sung vocals with backing layers pulling you in. Each changing note of the violin is a sway, each pull of the bow counts, and highlights the other elements at play as a heavier guitar pushes in with plenty of room and the track moves into an outwardly heavier stage, the vocals turning to throaty rasps (it’s not quite a scream, comes from the top of the back of the throat) before Naughton locks into tom runs and the band steers through a quiet break into the blazing, part-black metal finish. This is one song. It’s got more breadth and stylistic reach than the entire careers of many other bands, but seems like business as usual for The World at a Glance, who build the subsequent “Leering Birch” with a similar, subtly linear, onward-to-slaughter trajectory and follow with the full-bore distorted sway of “Circles in Sand,” like if death-doom had been invented by ’90s emo kids, and pulled by a thread of violin into a staticky droning midsection before building into a multi-vocal (clean and harsh) payoff that’s almost folkish until the airy squibble-solo takes charge, and turns back to a kind of pastoralia to finish such that the birdsong ending side A is right at home.

Such a multifaceted take can be a trap for an act who, like The World at a Glance, feel inclined to make their own aural context, but their individualism doesn’t feel like a put-on, and while The Longest Shadow Can Only Recede is a demanding listen, its scope has plenty to bring the audience in. Starting side B, the title-cut is also the centerpiece of the tracklisting, and it is unfurled with patience and grace in its willfully-sad first 90-plus seconds as it unhurries into consuming, lumbering sludge, ending a first movement that gives over to a particularly satisfying post-metallic middle marked by strikes of piano that seem almost beaten down by the intensity of the drums, violin in the background, bringing dimension to the considered cacophony. They break again and finish “The Longest Shadow Can Only Recede” with a pick-up-and-go crescendo that, yes, feels part-born from the nod-inducing school of Neurosis‘ “Stones From the Sky,” but is admirably the band’s own. Guitar starts “See” with some proggier noodling and a comedown feel in its initial stretch, but grows furious and then more furious before its seven minutes are done, still atmospheric like an open-air pummeling or a bonfire shooting sparks at the night sky.

The strings and peaceful guitar of the penultimate instrumental “On Some Distant Shore” — you can call it an interlude, I guess, but it’s far from no-effort filler in its wistful melody — are a well-placed recall to that brief serenity at the end of “Circles in Sand,” minus the actual chirping, before “Endlessly” takes off at a dust-thrash gallop. One might not realize it at first, but the entire five minutes of the song are the ending. It’s more than one part, but the spirit even as they work through the circular pattern of chugs around the three-minute mark, is epilogue, and if that’s the longest shadow itself receding in the aforementioned last fadeout, it is evocatively portrayed. One might say the same of the album as an entirety, which might dizzy at first with its turns from one part to the next in “Leering Birch” or “See,” or even the forward-sweep motion wrought in “Endlessly,” but The World at a Glance are never more out of control than they want to be, and in addition to being distinguished in sound, the presence and depth of mood they bring to The Longest Shadow Can Only Recede manifests as the troubled complexity and anxious twisting that feel both of the moment existentially and are still only a fraction of the band’s total expressive pastiche.

You can see the video for “Moth” below, followed by more details from the PR wire and the all-important preorder link.

Hope you enjoy:

The World at a Glance, “Moth” video premiere

CRUCIBLE is proud to release the new album from The World At A Glance, The Longest Shadow Can Only Recede – a trek through reverie, presented on classic black vinyl as a 12” LP, limited to 200. The Longest Shadow Can Only Recede releases September 1, 2023; 12” black vinyl & merch pre-orders available now via crucibleart.com.

CRU006 // The World At A Glance – The Longest Shadow Can Only Recede
A
1. Moth [07:30]
2. Leering Birch [05:56]
3. Circles In Sand [05:36]
B
4. The Longest Shadow Can Only Recede [06:21]
5. See [07:12]
6. On Some Distant Shore [02:48]
7. Endlessly [05:37]

Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by Liam Kriz at his studio on Yugambeh land in so-called Queensland from the 10th – 18th of May, 2022, Additional Recording also by Claire Westover

Lyrics written by Scott Mclatchie and Liam Phillips
Music written by Jack Naughton, Claire Westover, Scott Mclatchie and Liam Phillips
Album cover and back cover photo by Ben Westover
Graphic Design and arrangement by Claire Westover
Cover Model is Jemimah Laine
Robe/Clothing Designed and manufactured/created by Jemimah Laine

Indigenous sovereignty was never ceded. This record was created on stolen land.

The World At A Glance – The Longest Shadow Can Only Recede releases via CRUCIBLE, Friday September 1.

Guest Vocals by:
Sharni Brouwer on tracks 1 and 4
Adam McArthur on track 2
Mark Grant on track 5
Liam Phillips on track 5

The World At A Glance on this recording is:
Scott Mclatchie – Vocals, Guitar, Synth, Piano, Bass on tracks 2, 5 and 7
Claire Westover – Vocals, Violin, Bass on track 6
Jack Naughton – Vocals, Drums, Synth, Percussion, Bass on tracks 1, 3 and 4

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