Despair, Erosion, Loss

Rising as a beautiful, yet ragged and dirty beacon from the Ottawa metal scene, sludge enthusiasts Alaskan have yet to disappoint in their prolific stream of releases over the past five years. Their second full-length album entitled Despair, Erosion, Loss, continues where their split with Co-Pilot left off, incorporating more experimentalism in atmospheric and sludge elements which make this album a bit of a contrast from the post-metal driven endeavor of their previous full-length album Adversity; Woe. Akin to Isis during the middle of their career, Alaskan’s debut had bordered more on the post-metal scale and was founded on an ebbing and flowing collage of slow contemplation and sonic barrages that carried threats strong enough to pull bodies under.

While Adversity; Woe still stands as an excellent album in the post-metal/sludge genre that many bands seem to have taken up in the aftermath of founders Cult of Luna, Neurosis, etc., Despair, Erosion, Loss is Alaskan’s most mature and ambitious product yet. The overall flow of riffs, atmosphere, and sound are more continuous and thematic in a sense. That ebb and flow is still there, but certain elements in the layers of sound keep the contrasting passages unified. For example in “Sacrifice” the wavering use of strings and the development of a single melody over more than one section Even in places of unsettling dissonance and chaos or instances of thick, churning riffs, there remains this unifying feeling of beauty and desperation in loneliness that carries over from the more quiet and delicate sections. Unlike many other sludge bands, Alaskan refrains from getting too filthy in their more sludgy sections.

On a macrostructural scale, the ebb and flow formula is present from track to track, furthering the feeling of unity and paralleling what is occurring in the microstructure of each track itself. Despite this seemingly repetitious stylistic choice, the album refuses to lose energy or steam. When sections of heavy aggression descend into weightless clean guitar, there is a sensation as if the bottom of your heart has dropped away, a feeling that never quite reaches normality or the mundane with repeated listens.