ninehertz

Sheffield's Drawn From Ichor return this year from whatever mystical cave they've barracaded themselves into, developing in the mean time this deranged output, from you can only presume depraved solitary conditions and isolation-induced opiated states.

Forgotten Architecture is a cauldron of sordid sounds, a challenge set merely to get through and keep up, but importantly to note one that you always feel you want to continue with, to indeed relish. In the Old Key opens, an intruiging mix of death metal percussion, black metal vocals, bleak atmospherics and all over the shop time signatures, it all converges into an uncomfortable but oddly soothing psychedelic journey.

From there, you are drip fed a cacophony of unhinged mutterings, industrial-tinges and effects driven noise. It is an evolving beast, ever-changing, terraforming the aural sky as it goes, through the darkness. The schizophrenic Black Heron wades through the mire, bursting through the swamp with grinding death blasts, awakening you from the ambience enduced trance, while Offering their Way flickers its mood from positive uplift and downer induced lows. The closing Paracosm is a whirlwind of black metal chaos, but the presence of a more familiar song structure, of even genre, does little to ebb the madness.

Unlike other bands releasing punishing and difficult releases, this feels less purposefully obstinate, and wholly organic. As a result this is a palatable voyage to hitch a ride on, despite its intensity and seemingly personal manifest. Constantly unnerving but equally as interesting, Forgotten Architecture is an accomplished release, one for those unafraid of leftfield metal/noise experimentation.