This is the fifth album from Polish experimental metal band Thaw.
It’s been more than a while since 2017’s Grains, so I was intrigued to see what Thaw have to offer in 2024. An experimental act, who have operated in black metal, sludge, doom, drone, ambient, and noise waters across their career, what does Fading Backwards and its 36 minutes of new material bring us?
Falling Backwards seems to encapsulate a condensed version of the Thaw experience thus far. Combining the elements I mentioned above into six idiosyncratic tracks, this is a sludge-ridden, electronically enhanced form of blackened post-metal doom. Or something. Basically, this is a dark concoction of influences that have been mixed together to create an experience that’s murky and foul.
Each of the songs constructs itself differently out of its component parts. We have the slow-burning sludge doom of opener The Great Devourer, with clean vocals that are performed with an understated emotive presence. Then comes the inhuman industrial brutality of A Place Where Repetition Dwells, which is cold and merciless throughout. Watenberg Wheel is austere and Earth-esque, with a minimalistic approach to drone that builds to a tsunami of doom. In the Laughter and the Stride offers a vast soundscape of aggression and grandeur, driven by a dystopian sci-fi backbone. Dissociate Me/Spreader Bar takes the listener on a nightmare journey into warped dimensions of existence, before the longest, final track – Moral Justification of Selfishness – ends the record with a darkly epic journey into the cosmos.
Falling Backwards is another atypical record from Thaw. It showcases a band that have learned from everything they have done previously, who have then used this to then push themselves to the next level. Falling Backwards is an album to lose yourself in. Its madness-inducing waters are cold and threatening, but once you’re deep in their icy embrace there are unusual sights and sounds to be seen all around.
If you are a fan of non-standard black/doom/sludge/etc. music, then make sure you check this out.
Wonderbox Metal 