Even if you’re not a fan of Progressive Metal, you have to admit that when bands from that particular genre commit to an idea, they tend to go hard. Whether it’s a visual aesthetic, a musical direction, or an overall concept, there’s simply no room for half-measures. Some change with every album while others like Texan duo Sallow Moth have used every studio release to create, expand, and evolve their own unique and invariably bewildering universe.
Boiling the story down from its intricately woven, involute lore to the basics, the band’s fourth full-length album Hydrophilous Brood (Willowtip Records) takes place in a dimensional nest called Pamugara and continues the story of celestial moth creatures trying to restore cosmic balance and save their planet from mutant scavengers and technologically obsessed humans. In order to travel vast distances and interdimensionally, organisms pass through an ancient but unreliable artefact known as the Mossbane Lantern and rematerialize as new hybrid species. This complex, Daedelian mythology includes creatures and objects such as Mothlords, Servym, Panglacial Gauntlets, Canopy Spiders, Stasis Cocoons, and Chaos Orbs. You get the picture.
Much like their self-constructed universe, Sallow Moth’s music is in itself a genre hybridisation, focusing largely on technical Death Metal but also finding the time to slide off into other associated territories. A good example of this comes on “Distended in Panglacial Advent.” An otherwise brutal cut thick with stops, time changes and abrupt left turns from the school of Voivod and Gorguts, which also features some of the lowest, syrupiest vocals audible to the human ear as well as finding the time for a brief light jazz interlude.
Opening track and top of the list of song titles you’re unlikely to remember after a heavy night out, “Nebulous Appendages of Vacillant Seafoam” is a labyrinthine affair awash with churning riffs and blasting drums. A conundrumic, enigmatic behemoth, the song features a section of which Cynic would be proud, and other parts which sound like Devin Townsend at his most abrasive.
“Arcane Benthic Umbilicus” moves from gentle atmospherics into a Mastodon-style riff and yet another seething ocean of riff wizardry and offbeat jazz. Boasting some of the record’s most accessible riffs, the song sounds like Imperial Triumphant if they sang about hybrid-organisms and humanoid lepidoptera. Elsewhere, cuts like “Driftmoth Vivisector,” “Biohybrid Virulence,” and the searing title track are epic journeys comprised of surging riffs, ear-piercing squeals, and pneumatic, off-kilter drums.
“Polymorphic Gnaw” comes with pulsing bass work and gargled vocals, more serrated riffs and bursts of speed, and even an Iron Maiden-esque melody woven into the fantastical science fiction brutality. Finally, closing cut and total insanity blast, “Serene Aqueous Leech” is a schizophrenic five minutes of jagged riffs and otherworldly bass playing, computer game noises and smooth alien trumpet Jazz.
With multi-instrumentalist, producer, and singer Garry Brents at the helm as ever, Sallow Moth is a two-man venture this time, drummer Allen Gingerich doing an extraordinary, extraterrestrial job behind the kit. Another incredible intergalactic, interdimensional journey, Hydrophilous Brood reaches the parts other progressive/technical death metal acts cannot reach. And then hybridises them.
Buy the album here:
https://willowtip.com/bands/details/sallow-moth.aspx
9 / 10
GARY ALCOCK
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