Vast Chains

"Vast chains" - it's an interesting phrase when used by an artist like Jute Gyte. Could it be signifying something unbreakable - a reference to the albums predecessor Discontinuities? Could it be a metaphor for the human condition, one of inherent bondage and submission to futility of existence? Or, is the great weights of history, an existence built on top of endless suffering, with these vast chains connecting every era of man? Regardless, Vast Chains, presents its listener with the complexity and challenge of its predecessor with an accompanying sense of tension, dread, and nuance.

The opener, based on a line from Anaïs Nin's House of Incest is a trembling, plodding song that moves as a drunken Monotheist riff with accompanying microtones dot the musical landscape. It moves slowly, shifting back and forth from clean guitars to sludge riffs to death metal breakdowns. It's an exercise in patience and practice, testing the listener with its strict lashes for riffs and leads. It draws blood slowly, and with pleasure. Taking influence from a variety of genres, it's a amalgamation for Jute Gyte's particular brand of weird and a crucible for a listener's tolerance of it. "Endless Moths Swarming" is the exact opposite in pace and theme - it is frantic, panicked, and let loose - it's opening riff sounds like an animal escaping from a cage before the other lead comes crashing in - by the end of the song, it lives up to its title - it sounds absolutely maddening - like swarms and swarms are caving in your head.

Vast Chains features an incredible amount of layering - at certain times it sounds like there are four or five different guitars playing completely different things and it's not until the listener is able to take each and place it in the musical canvas that this album becomes even remotely comprehensible. It's dense and foreboding, an takes the tightened rope of the first album and begins to lash the listener with ever changing landscapes, intensive repetition, and unending twists and turns. "Flux and Permanence" is indeed living up to its title and is a good representation of the album. It features a tightly controlled chaos, with blasting sections that careen at a galloping pace, and the slower sections seem to be tripping over themselves but are in fact incredibly well composed and gently accent the craziness of each other.

It's an album of contradictions - of power and of submission, of misery and escape. It plays like a dream, floating in and out of scenes of reality as the dreamer struggles to escape from the unending maze. There are moments of beauty and melody tied tightly within the chaos and madness. There are vignettes are sanity and cohesion behind each otherworldly layer. It is an incredibly memorable album in spite of its oddness and outsider elements - "The Fire of This" features some of the most unnerving moments Jute Gyte has presented, with an absolutely demented clean guitar break that echoes over a screeching tone - ending on a gigantic heavy hitting doom riif before fading into a Jute Gyte favorite of synth and static. It's a mind-blowing closer.

Vast Chains is arguably the most difficult album thus far and proves more than worth of its challenge - it's rewarding to revisit songs and pick apart elements - it's worth the time and effort and highly recommended. This is the bloodletting, this is the pleasure in pain. The act before the climax to come in part three.