Register Forgot login?

© 2002-2024
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Privacy Policy

Asunder > Works Will Come Undone > Reviews > Tantalus
Asunder - Works Will Come Undone

Utterly exceptional. - 95%

Tantalus, January 9th, 2007

This monolithic two track album is my first experience of Asunder, but they're certainly a group that I'll be following faithfully in the future. Whilst initially appearing to emerge from the same art-noise-doom-drone scene seemingly (though not really) spawned by the (actually structurally unexciting) Isis, 'Works Will Come Undone' offers two key aspects often missing from that now-crowded genre - heart and restraint.

The albums brooding pace and moody, earthen sonics - the latter provided by an on-form Billy Anderson, returning to my good books after his frankly crap work on the last Primordial record - combine with a measured, darkly sulking cello (provided by Jackie Gratz of Amber Asylum) create a singular atmosphere which sets them apart from many of their musical peers.

The album acheives that oft-longed-for-seldom-acheived quality: the feeling that one has spent half the time listening to it that has actually been consumed. To be sure, this record does fucking go on a bit: one hour and twelve minutes go by from one end to the other, but it sure as hell doesn't feel like it. I found it hard to beleive that I sat through a 50:00 song without losing patience/consciousness, but that I managed it is a testament to Asunder's consistent skill and invention. Not for them are cheap 'on a dime' time signature changes or sudden melodic shifts in an attempt to grasp attention, instead relying on subtlety, depth and quality songwriting. There you have the 'restraint' - 'Works Will Come Undone' builds tension throughout without ever seeming contrived, and never outstays its welcome whilst being twice as long as many other albums in its field.

Ah yes, the 'heart': I challenge you to sit through the record without once being quite seriously moved. I don't mean 'moved' in the respect that Trivium or MCR or even modern day In Flames apparently do in the modern, simultaneously depressing and self-aggrandising idiom of most popular 'alternative music'. I mean really fucking moved; like the tectonic plates move when the earth farts; like when someone accuses Bob Geldof of being the fake bastard he really is; like when you hear a great fucking album.

Buy this now.