Malevich are a screamo/sludge metal band from the US and this is their third album.
Under a Gilded Sun is the 39-minute follow up to 2019’s Our Hollow, and reveals a band that have spend their time wisely between albums. Malevich have impressed with this latest collection of songs.
Under a Gilded Sun is a rage-fuelled creation of claws, teeth, and venom. It’s a hybrid of black metal, screamo, sludge, post-metal, death metal, and grindcore, all thrown together without care for genre boundaries. The aim is music that’s creative and deadly, and in this Malevich have succeeded. Words like genuine and authentic are relevant, but somehow seem irrelevant, in the sense that this is what the baseline for any music should really be, rather than being pointed out as notable, but here we are.
The furious intensity of grindcore and screamo is tempered by post-metal resplendence and sludge worldbuilding. Covered with a blackened sheen and honed to an avant-garde death metal edge, there is a lot going on here. Of course, the individual components aren’t neatly separated like I’ve implied here, but rather bleed all over each other, feeding on each other like self-replicating entities driven by the darkness to ever-spawn more jagged riffs, scathing vocal attacks, and apocalyptic percussive pulses.
You could really go down a rabbit hole in describing the various genres and subgenres that have been twisted and torn up during the creation of Under a Gilded Sun, but suffice to say, this is the sort of multihued hybrid release that I really like. At various points across the record I was put in mind of a range of different bands, although interestingly, only fleetingly, as Malevich increasingly seem to have a well-developed personality that’s theirs alone. I’ll list a few here, just for further context for the music – Frail Body, Hidden Mothers, Johnny Truant, PG.99, Plebian Grandstand, Pyrrhon, Remote Viewing, Sugar Horse. I suppose Avant-garde post-metal screamo is probably the closest to Malevich’s style, but it ultimately doesn’t matter what you call it really.
The screams, growls, and roars are raw and angry, and are blessed with an edge of chaos that’s very moreish and charismatic. Occasionally there is clean singing too – fragile, delicate, and completely at odds with the cathartic harsh vocals, but it’s a juxtaposition that enhances the whole, rather than distracting from it. Importantly, the music backing these vocals up is layered and richly emotive. It’s textured with electronics and synths, adding further depth to the music’s tactile tapestry. This is art to to be felt and explored, not just admired from afar.
Under a Gilded Sun is a journey, across soundscapes that convulse, corrode, re-form, and burst into vibrant life anew. Each listen allows the listener to travel different paths, embracing the dissonance, absorbing the beauty, feeling the suffocating outrage, riding the choppy riffs, enduring the burning potency of unrestrained forceful emotion, or much else. Each track offers up a vista to be torn through with energetic enthusiasm, maudlin introspection, distracted wandering, attentive laser-focus, or any other number of means or exploration. They key thing is to experience Under a Gilded Sun in a variety of ways – it always seems to pay off, regardless.
Malevich have created a rich, diverse, and multifaceted album, and I urge you to explore these songs at length. Although I enjoyed Our Hollow, this is Malevich operating on another level.
Wonderbox Metal 