“My screams are signs of a new breath.“
Some time in 2009, a note was passed to me by someone in the schoolyear above. It had two lists: “Post Rock” contained cornerstones of the era like Explosions in the Sky, Maybeshewill, This Will Destroy You and more. Below this was “Post Metal”: ISIS, Cult of Luna, Callisto, et al. The scrap of paper is now lost to time, but its influence on me has been colossal. These recommendations accelerated the expansion of my tastes, and my understanding of what music could be and could do. It also exposed me to the late 00s music blogging scene (SirensSound, RIP), and I’ll never be able to separate Swiss band Rorcal from that era. Their 30 minute, single track split release with Kehlvin was one of the many things that challenged and improved me. It feels great to be writing about a new release from Rorcal fourteen years later.
In my absence, the band has been very active, with Silence being their fifth full length release. It’s a weighty album that hyperfocuses on oppressive heaviness and aggression. They fuse black and post metal on this release, with a particular dedication to slamming on deep root notes. The production is primed to capture all this power, leaving distortion to churn above like dark clouds. You’ll hear this on tracks like “Extinguished Innocence”, whose introduction features a rare moment of semi clean vocals, opener “Early Mourning“, and the album’s very ending in “No Alleviation, even in Death”. Next to the deep notes, surging trem-picked black metal passages deliver a more familiar approach to riffing, but the complexity of the band in motion keeps the feeling loose and unhinged. The bass and drums thus hit like nails to tie the band down.
Silence offers few hooks, preferring walls of sound, though there are some exceptions that start to emerge after a few listens. “Hope is a Cancer” is a furious and short track, starting in blast-beatdown mode, vocals desperate, guitars winding. The mid section riffs skip over bars, emphasising the choking madness they’re trying to capture. The outro beyond minute 2:15 is the moment of gravity, re-using the twisted riffs for a time, before leaving just drums and vocals as the instruments become ethereal feedback. “Constant Void” follows sharply on, structured a lot like “Hope is a Cancer” with its pummelling first half and particularly “doom-gaze” second. This ending holds the root note closely, always resolving back to it like a fable, even as more of the guitars give over to frozen noise.
From a catalogue of extremity, Silence is perhaps Rorcal’s most extreme. It’s fitting that it was recorded live by Stéphane Kroug, who’s been engineering the band’s work since their first album. Although there are some moments where the tail end of a track can drone out, you’ll find few truly dynamic moments here, an aspect that I would need to truly love this album. Be prepared for a relentless assault, and Rorcal will reward you.
7/10
Silence releases through Hummus Records on the 29th September, and can be pre-ordered here.