Random Cosmic Violence

My first exposure to Usnea was seeing them live at a festival. Even though Ufomammut, Conan, Yob and Primitive Man played that night (man, that was a good doom night all things considered), Usnea struck me as perhaps the most angry and tortured of the bunch. Not the heaviest, mind you--there aren't many band that can compete with Conan's tone nowadays. Anyways, Usnea is fairly suffocating in a live setting, with very little cutting through other than a thick chord every ten seconds or so accompanied by some agonized shrieks. I wasn't especially blown away by their set, but they were competing with some big names that night, and they did a serviceable job. I saw Random Cosmic Violence in a local record store a couple months after, said "fuck it" and bought it on a whim.

Though their music came across as a bit minimal and thin live, it's (thankfully) more fleshed out on record. The clean guitar parts often used as introductions and interludes aren't completely drowned out by the thick chords that follow them afterward, which is an advantage of hearing Random Cosmic Violence in a studio setting. There's a bleak, heavy sadness along the lines of Thergothon on this album (particularly in the final track, "Detritus"), although Usnea replaces a little bit of their melancholic beauty with a more bitter and modern sense of despair. Perhaps Therogthon isn't the best band to use as a comparison, though, as funeral doom has evolved a lot since Stream from the Heavens and the influences aren't the same. Usnea remind me more of a band local to my area, Yeti on Horseback, in that they basically just sound like they're taking modern, cavernous death metal songs and playing them at a snail's pace. There's an absence of clean vocals, save for the beginning of the title track. Usnea separate themselves a little bit from most modern doom by adding a slight tinge of black metal in their songs, most notably in the shrieky vocals, the blastbeat section in the middle of the title track, and the ethereal melodies that come in near the ends of "Healing Through Death" and "Detritus". They build a bleak and bitter atmosphere through thick, gradual death/doom chords and use the black metal moments as climaxes when most doom metal bands wold just be content to use a little lead guitar section--or worse, just end the song in the same place it began. There's a distinct sense of progression and direction in the songs on Random Cosmic Violence that you don't often see in this style of music.

The "blackened funeral doom" approach used by Usnea isn't quite as thin and bare as, say, Nortt. That project was focused on pure atmosphere with very little riffing to supplement it, but it was also a one-man band. Random Cosmic Violence is much more substantial and fleshed-out even even at its most minimal moments, one of the biggest benefits of having a full band trying their hand at this sort of thing. That being said, the crawling pace can still feel a little bit meandering and unengaging at times. Sometimes it feels like they hang onto a theme for a little bit too long, or perhaps just aren't really evolving the soundscape quickly enough. It comes with the territory a bit--that's just the caveat of the slow'n'low style. This isn't meant to constantly be demanding of your full attention, instead functioning nicely as background music for a somewhat dreary Sunday afternoon.

It's proving very difficult to give this album a numerical rating when all is said and done. I never feel totally satisfied with the score I give albums in reviews, but most of the time I can settle on a number after a couple of close listens. That isn't the case with Random Cosmic Violence, because it does what it does well, but I also acknowledge that it drags a bit and that I have to be in a pretty specific mood to really get something out of it. I didn't really like this much when I first heard it, but I've warmed up to it a significant amount after giving it some time to grow. I could this a high 80 based on the fact that it's a very good example of how funeral doom can work on record when executed properly, but at the same time I was a bit underwhelmed when I saw them live and I'm not completely engrossed by the atmosphere while listening to it. Depending on my mood, I could give this anywhere from a mid 60 to a high 80, so I guess I'll just go somewhere in the middle.

Obviously, though, whatever score I assign this album doesn't really mean shit; you can always just listen to this yourself and determine whether you like it or not. What I tried to articulate in that previous paragraph, though, is that this can be either a great album or a mediocre one depending on your mood. As long as you come at Random Cosmic Violence from that perspective and give it a few chances to grow on you, you'll (hopefully) get something out of it. Just don't expect to be blown away right off the bat.