Horrendous - Anareta (2015)

Horrendous's Anareta is a death metal album that deserves to be talked about as an album. It is lush and beautiful and dynamic and polished and I find it really relaxing. Forgoing primal aggression (which I dig so so much) for a layered sound that takes its time to roll out like a hallucinogenic fungus first spreading into your drywall and then releasing its spores throughout the house all at once. Anareta takes multiple listens to get a feel for what is going on and to catch the hooks woven into the piled fabric of its surface. I hear a lot of say, Dan Swano's stuff in here, as well as Chuck Schuldiner, but Horrendous really sound like nothing but themselves. Horrendous also care a lot about the mastering of their music, insisting on a full range of sound without over-compression or forced loudness. This makes a tremendous difference in what it is like to listen to their work, which is especially nice in death metal. This is a death metal which although being brand new, stresses continuity and backwards compatibility with past rocks and metals, back to the 1970's and 1980's, possessing a grand, but not grandiose, feeling and manner. This is a music which turns and pivots on multiple axes, but is never technical or ornate for its own sake, rather focusing on songwriting and composition to produce a satisfying listen. This is truly pleasurable to hear not just in the moment, but to muse and think about later on and recollect in dark tranquility, and so to put on again.