The vaunted Mariana Trench is nearly seven miles deep underneath the ocean surface. Or in other words, it plummets down into the Earth more than Mt. Everest stands tall. The creatures that occupy that type of ecosystem need to withstand unimaginable pressure, cold temperatures and a complete lack of light.
And if that’s not terrifying enough, Dryad took this notion to the next level and crafted a thirty-five-minute opus that does as good a job as anything else in positing what the environs found down there might actually sound like via the medium of biting blackened metal: The Abyssal Plain (Prosthetic Records) captures and exploits the paralyzing nightmare of finding oneself in such an alien, unknown world. Foggy, muffled production represents the complete disorientation that would be felt so far below.
Thanks to the monochromatic, abstract mess that is the album artwork, these thirteen songs poke and prod at your wildest fears. Claire Nunez devises demonic, biting, untethered, carcinogenic screams and shrieks. It’s the type of sharp that’s so precise you can’t even feel being sliced. As if the vocals are fresh from the whetstone, it’s an element that superbly encapsulates the topic at hand.
‘Bottomfeeder’ is written as a first-hand account of something scouring the bedrock for sustenance in an everyday fight for survival. ‘Trenches’ – unsurprisingly – is much of the same: “Sometimes I want to die / Deep inside I sense a plight / That void within will take my life.” Musically, the track features a galloping rock drum line and a guitar solo which plummets the listener into a whirlpool of finality.
The most chilling of all is ‘Counterillusion’ because it presents echoing and what sounds like a distant cry of pain that is audible yet certainly far, far away. And ‘Pompeii Worm’ recreates what one would hear if they were underwater and Nunez was on the shore, hollering and wailing through the nautical barrier.
The Abyssal Plain is a true house of horrors amalgamation. Musically, the terror unfolds fast and poignant. Never mistaken for a crisply produced affair, the record is aware of its plan from the outset and never falters from the downright indomitable despair it aims to instill in its listeners.
Buy the album here:
8 / 10
MATT COOK