A Merging to the Boundless

StarGazer is probably my favourite metal band in the post-2000 period. They are the only band I've ever heard that manages to combine progressive death metal (like Atheist) with progressive black metal (like Ved Buens Ende). They have only released three albums to date, despite a long career that spans back to the mid-1990s. The average gestation period for a StarGazer album seems to be about five years. This may be because the musicians involved in StarGazer are involved in several other touring bands, but it also indicates that crafting such music takes time.

Many extreme metal bands flirt with occult imagery. Usually this is little more than on a surface level. Not so for StarGazer, where occultism informs their actual music as well as their lyrics and imagery. Their music strives for something beyond the range of human comprehension. It is replete with riddles and decoys. Understanding a StarGazer album requires many listens. The answers reveal themselves to the dedicated listener, for whom a picture will eventually emerge. Impenetrability and deception are integral to the experience. I cannot claim to always understand what the band are doing, but I know it is always worth persisting.

The band's third album, "A Merging to the Boundless", begins with one such contradiction. The opener ("Black Gammon") seems like straightforward black/death/war metal; a tighter version of something from Sarcófago's "I.N.R.I.". The drumming has a similar hurried feel, the beats landing milliseconds away from where you feel they should land. The rest of the band hide their controlled, virtuoso tendencies beneath the barbarism. The fact that StarGazer might seek out Sarcófago (and maybe Blasphemy) is revealing. There is an entire sub-genre dedicated to copying those bands, and that sub-genre is about as regressive as metal gets. Of course, Sarcófago themselves were groundbreaking as well as primitive. StarGazer aspires to the same pioneer spirit rather than fetishising the ‘raw’ black metal of the past. It is a bold opening track and it softens the listener up for the various angles that follow.

The second song ("Old Tea") immediately switches to a slower, grimmer, more expansive style. I see StarGazer as the successor to Ved Buens Ende and the influence is obvious here. The spacier elements are taken even further on "An Earth Rides Its Endless Carousel", my favourite song on the album. This one also reminds me of an even more progressive black metal band; In the Woods..., and their masterpiece ("Omnio"). StarGazer seem confident playing looser, more relaxed and revealing music than ever before. They are less inclined to bind themselves in dense musical knots. They have retained their intensity but have become better at hiding it.

The musicianship is flawless. The band members are elite players with near-limitless creative potential. As always, the bass playing is the highlight. It is even better here than it was before. We are treated to all the same dexterous tricks but there is greater melody and variation. There are chords, harmonics and all manner of things that metal bass players fear. The production is smoother than "A Great Work of Ages" and fuller than "The Scream that Tore the Sky". It makes for an easier listening experience than either record. I presume StarGazer uses old school production techniques and analogue equipment. They don't seem like a band that would use samples and triggers. It would not fit with their occult aesthetic.

"A Merging to the Boundless" is a brilliant album. It is StarGazer's best and most accessible record yet, despite it being as challenging as anything they have done previously. This is not the album I would recommend to people who are new to the band. It would be much more satisfying to experience their albums chronologically, solving the riddles along the way. This album will then feel like a grand unveiling, a reward for traveling on the band's journey to this point. Who knows what will happen next?

This is a seriously weird but addictive album and its wide mix of elements shouldn’t work as well as it does. The Australian trio cultivates a mysterious and magical aura throughout their elusive albums. This 2014 effort was released 4 years after the excellent A Great Work of Ages and I bet it’s gonna take a while to get a new one. This is fine though since despite the short length of this album, there’s so many things to discover on every spin. The fact that the members are involved in other high caliber bands such as Mournful Congregation or Cauldron Black Ram (if you’re not familiar with both of them, check them out too) could also explain the long periods between full lengths.

While I certainly like straight death metal with no frills or gimmicks, I do prefer adventurous bands unleashing weirdness upon weirdness. That’s why I think Horrendous released one of the best recent death metal albums with Ecdysis and it’s probably why Opeth is my favorite band (I guess they still count as death metal, right?). StarGazer are definitely one of those exploratory bands and they have an unparalleled vision. Traveling through avant-garde seas like their fellow Australians Portal, I do feel this trio made their experimental blend of extreme metal more natural by removing the obsessive Lovecraftian horror element of The Curator’s band. The most impressive component of this trio is their level of musicianship, it’s simply through the roof. They’re basically Australia’s extremely cult response to Rush, Atheist, Death but also to Incantation and Demilich, if this makes sense. Like their New Zealand buddies of Ulcerate, the trio consisting of the usual metal instruments are able to push the generic envelope of such a formula but contrary to the Everything Is Fire Tasmanians, they don’t do it by creating a massive wall of sound. They do it with a superbly smart sound full of intelligent moments like no one else.

What’s also exceptional about them is their ability to integrate an experimental approach so easily in their songs. They almost hide the fact that they’re weird by just being riff machines, a good example of this would be “Black Gammon”, the aggressive opener. The song starts in a somewhat safe way but then bludgeon you with insane bass licks (apparently fretless bass played with a pick).

There’s also the variations in moods and tempos that are quite interesting, “An Earth Rides Its Endless Carousel” has this smooth section incorporated with ease and it’s just unbelievable. There’s also some brief clean vocals to accentuate the transition. Speaking of vocals, I’ll admit I can really say who of either Damon Good (known as The Great Righteous Destroyer here) or Denny Blake (The Serpent Inquisitor) are singing since they share the duty but there’s a grand variety of extreme metal vocals styles. From deep, cavernous growls to the more traditional thrashy death style (opening of “Incense and Aeolian Chaos”), and I must say that every facets of this aspect of StarGazer’s personality is thoroughly enjoyable. If you add the fact that the lyrics are totally bonkers, you get an interesting album. The mix of magical, mystical and fantasy themes written with in poetical but also academical sort of way is without a doubt one of the highlights of the record for me. Let me go back to what I was saying about the “hidden” weirdness, the lyrics absolutely add this eccentric flavor.

Antiquial light shed with a wave of lichen hand
An ancient tress, a wooden pulse
Varnish reeks, shadows creak
A stale grace, old tea, old tea

The Australian trio are in fact a war metal band turned into an university professor. They went to war, killed a bunch of innocent people, came back and finished their English literature PhD and wrote about their experiences. The skilled marriage of death and black metal (war metal is often a mix of both and some added elements) is actually hard to distinguish, I do think they’re a bit more on the death metal side most of the time but there’s definite black metal elements on Merging. They play technical death without falling into the easy tropes of the genre, no overlong soloing or disastrous odd time signatures written to impress kids. It’s just unhinged drumming with mesmerizing bass lines and intricate guitars. The eleven minutes song “The Grand Equalizer” is obviously the centerpiece of this album, it has all their elements and it’s just a fantastic progressive metal track full of twists and turns. The album then ends its (relatively) brief essay with two harder and to the point tracks. I guess I’ll just replay it until I fully understand it.


Metantoine's Magickal Realm