Maryland’s own Genevieve caught my attention in 2015 with their interesting avant-garde take on black/death metal found on Escapism. Escapism was an album I found myself quickly obsessed with and unable to put down. The groups follow up, Regressionism, is about to be released next Friday, November 24th through the always excellent Grimoire Records. We’ve got a full early stream of Regressionism for you today, and this is not one to miss.
Regressionism has a lot to unpack musically, and describing the music is a challenging exercise given how much range and ground they cover. But to take a brief stab at it, the songs on Regressionism call to mind the supreme dark mastery of both Krallice and Imperial Triumphant at times, and a lot of it contains some death metal influence as well. To fill in the gaps a bit more, Grimoire Records owner Noel mentioned to me that “This band is nearly incapable of writing music fit for comparison to other bands' works, but while working on this mix, I was reminded at times of Ephel Duath's strange 2003 release "The Painter's Palette", and at other times…Portal.” All of which is spot on and the nods to both Ephel Duath and Portal make sense once you’re a few songs deep into the sprawling depths of Regressionism.
While often discordant and claustrophobic sounding, Regressionism has a lot of lighter calming passages throughout where the music breathes and slowly builds in a post-metal sounding kind of way. Offering up a deceptive temporary calm before returning to annihilate your senses with even more intensity ever time. It’s the contrast between the two extremes that I think makes this record a stronger effort than Escapism, which was more wholly focused on nightmare sounds spawned from a strange hell.
Furthermore, it’s a nice touch because most bands that go this grim and noxious rarely have an ethereal and warm side to their sound like Genevieve does on Regressionism. But when they do go full unhinged ferocious, as happens many a time across the record, it’s truly something to behold. The group has down a near perfect mix of eerie frantic agony steered by complex musical performances that mutate their hyper-aggressive side into a messy but satisfying sensory assault.
Regressionism is an ambitious and intricate multi-genre voyage into a surreal realm beyond ordinary sounding black metal and death metal focused music. It’s not for the faint of heart, but I think this record will win over a lot of people that normally might not dabble too heavily in this type of malevolent and dissonant sort of metal. Jam out to our early stream below, then pre-order it through the Grimoire Records Bandcamp page if you’re enjoying the experience. You can follow the group over on the Genevieve Facebook page too.
