The Baring of Shadows

Kardashev aren’t exactly new comers to the progressive side of the extreme metal scene. Hailing from Tempe, Arizona, USA, they’ve been playing for eight years now and The Baring of Shadows marks their fifth overall release. The new EP comes nearly three years after their latest EP, titled The Almanac. The band’s name is taken from one of the former Soviet Union’s astrophysicists’ names. Nikolai Kardashev was known primarily for creating a method of measuring a civilization’s level of technological advancement. This ties well with the lyrical content of the band, which deals with the advancement of the human race through themes of technology, selflessness, love and altruism. The Baring of Shadows, as stated by the band on their Bandcamp page, is about:

“The hardships that many people share in experience, and narrowly focuses on the pain of loss, and the truth that is accepting the natural order, albeit chaotic.”

Kardashev have started out as a progressively inclined death metal band with atmospheric elements. This is something that through careful tinkering has become rather difficult to describe. The sound that we hear on The Baring of Shadows is a distinct mixture of death metal, deathcore elements, post-rock, shoegaze, and ambient touches. The band brands its hallmark timbre as ‘post deathgaze’, and that’s as fitting as it gets to be honest.

Although I would be remiss if I wouldn’t point out that this mixture takes the weight and brutality of the metallic components and makes it accentuate and highlight the soft and ethereal glow of the post-rock and shoegaze parts, giving the whole affair an epic feeling that isn’t cheesy in any way. It’s simply glorious. The whole blend is delivered with a progressive mindset and a forward thinking attitude towards structure – at least when compared to other representatives of adjacent niches.

The Baring of Shadows is quite short, spanning a mere four tracks and clocking in at a modest twenty-five minutes, but if anything, that’s a testament to how much can be condensed into such a small space without making it overbearing. It’s quite impressive really, as it doesn’t border on cacophony in spite of its density. Overall, the production is also quite good, leaving all the layers’ intelligibility intact and offering plenty of nuance where it is needed.

My only qualm is with how the vocals sit in the mix. They’re somewhat buried, especially when the growling and the screaming is present. This isn’t a big drawback, to say that this aspect alone would make or break the record. I’m certain, as we’re used to Kardashev, an instrumental version will come around sooner than later, albeit the vocals themselves do add a fair deal to the whole atmosphere. The instrumentation and the songwriting, however, is top notch. There’s quite plenty to float anyone’s boat and it’s delivered aptly without any kind of dips across the entire runtime.

Kardashev are seriously on to something here. It’s very easy to get lost in the varying niches of the metallic type. Kardashev craft a corner of their own, which hopefully, if given enough time and dedication will morph into something never before seen. The potential is there and it would seem that there is plenty of drive as well, which is quite reassuring. What are you waiting for? Close this tab and go listen to those tunes!

originally published at: https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/kardashev-the-baring-of-shadows/

Innovation is the lifeblood of any art form, without it we wither and die, but there are times when one wonders just how far originality can extend. Among the projects to come about in the past decade that has sought to answer this question about as brazenly as possible is the Temple, Arizona based extreme metal outfit Kardashev. Naming themselves for the Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev and identifying their peculiar stylistic blend as deathgaze (a hybrid of the atmospheric flavoring of shoegaze with a highly progressive and nuanced take on deathcore), it can be plainly stated that they have struck new ground within metal’s ever-growing paradigm. Yet despite what may come off as a gimmicky niche, this band has managed a sizable catalog of EPs, singles, and an LP in 2015 dubbed Peripety that present a highly functional and intricate sound, and their latest offering in the 2020 EP The Baring Of Shadows is no exception, so much so that Metal Blade Records opted to support a 2021 rerelease of the album.

Many disparate influences find themselves in an unusual state of cathartic synchronicity on each of these four songs, which can be best described as free-flowing compositions contained within varying lengths of time. The pristine atmospheric beauty and contemplative character of famed blackgaze icons Alcest intermingles with the quirky progressive character of something close to what Devin Townsend might dream up, and often digresses into a high-impact and technical brand of brutality ordinarily reserved to the likes of Rivers Of Nihil and The Faceless. This highly eclectic sonic template is matched by a multifaceted vocal performance out of front man Mark Garrett, who contorts his voice into a variety of guttural personas that match the most inhuman extremities of the death metal style, yet seamlessly shifts into a chanting croon like something off one of Midnight Odyssey’s more serene compositions, occasionally moving into a highly feminine falsetto to codify a veritable one-man choir.

Though each chapter of this musical novella to things intergalactic and introspective stands as a case study in how to defy convention, the actual scope of everyone is not beyond the grasp of accessibility. The opening convergence of serenity and rage that is “A Frame. A Light.” has a very clear formula of progression from a droning sea of reverb and consonant chords into a darker shade of blackened glaze that could almost pass for a direct nod to Alcest’s current sound, save the guitars being much heavier, the drums more abrasive, and there being a greater amount of harmonic interplay between the instrumentation. Its successor “Snow-Sleep” brings things closer to a tech death feel yet retains the dense atmospheric backdrop, while the slightly shorter “Torchpassing” ratchets up the rate of transition between ballad-like softness and bludgeoning fury. Ironically enough, the closing chapter “Heartache” proves to be the shortest of the pack and gets the closest to being a pure extreme metal offering.

Perhaps this EP’s lone Persian Flaw is that its stylistic demeanor is so unique, so out of the ordinary that it may have a difficult time appealing to the average consumer of extreme metal. Although it definitely employs a health amount of tech death and deathcore influences, the bulk of its sonic contents tilt closer to the atmospheric black metal and blackgaze side of the coin, appealing the most to the fans of Alcest, Agalloch, and the longwinded contemplative world occupied by the likes of Mare Cognitum and Lustre. Nevertheless, despite the similar atmospheric trappings and contemplative lyrical content to the aforementioned bands, Kardashev prove to be a very unique beast sporting a sound that would not be easily mistaken for anything else. One can only hope that the newfound partnership of this outfit with Metal Blade Records will see them honing their craft even more in the coming years, because this feels like it could be the beginning of something very interesting.

Originally written for Sonic Perspectives (www.sonicperspectives.com)