Atlanta four-piece Malevich welcome the end of the world in devastatingly poignant style.
If you’re unfamiliar with Malevich, they state that they ‘make weird heavy music for the end of the world’. The Atlanta quartet’s new offering, Under A Gilded Sun, delivers on that promise in full, with apocalyptic power dominating the soundscape from the moment you click play.
Opening track Blossom In Full Force wastes no time in setting the tone. Equal parts punishing and poetic, it's almost grinding metal fury is layered with a tangible desperation. But rather than blast their way through start to finish, Malevich revel in dynamics. Delirium And Confidence follows with a beautiful murkiness, its sludgy textures colliding with blackened screamo, where melody wrestles with dissonance, gasping for air.
In the centre of the record lies Illusion Never Changed, a slow-burning ambient number that provides a necessary breath. It's this ghostlike shimmering that allows the weight of the surrounding tracks to hit harder. Then comes Into Bliss, where guest vocals from Lex Santiago of Sunrot helps forge a track both emotionally pummelling and quietly optimistic. Beneath the chaos, there’s a call to community and catharsis, even if connection hurts.
Everything is polished off with quite frankly earth-shattering seven-minute behemoth Supine, Under The Gilded Sun, that plays like the sonic equivalent of the sun expanding and devouring the Earth, beauty and horror intertwined. It's cinematic, it's punishing, and it's Malevich at their most devastating.
What Malevich have created here isn’t something that’s experimenting for the sake of experimenting. It’s a furious, deeply felt reaction to a collapsing world, filtered through abstraction, grief, and the power of collective resistance. At times traumatic, at others transcendently beautiful, Under A Gilded Sun is a vital, burning statement from a band that refuses to play it safe.
Verdict: 3/5
For fans of: Sunrot, Lingua Ignota, Alcest
Under A Gilded Sun is out now via Church Road
