by Will Henriksen (@will___h___)
BIG|BRAVE didn’t set out to be one of the world’s most riveting experimental metal bands, but you wouldn’t know it by listening to them. Allegedly tranquil, acoustic roots had already given way to a distinctively heavy approach by the time they made their first album. From their 2014 debut Feral Verdure to 2019’s A Gaze Among Them, each release has absolutely radiated discomfort. New album Vital appears to push their approach to its limit, leaning into their well-oiled combination of sinewy vocals, excruciatingly slow rhythms, and twin-guitar sheets of sound. It reaches heights of intensity that can be hard to believe.
“Half Breed,” the middle track on side A, provides an emotional and ideological center to the proceedings. As the band itself explains, “This album involves what it means navigating the outside world in a racialized body and what it does to the psyche as a whole while exploring individual worth within this reality.” The lyrics of “Half Breed” evoke a history of unjust punishment. The music is a series of slow, persistent stabs. The song’s nine-minute music video provides a vivid illustration: a person, lying prone, gradually buried in dirt by an unseen force. There is no relief, even when they dig their way out. The burier remains anonymous and unaccountable. The damage is done.
New drummer Tasy Hudson powers the lurching groove of opening track “Abating the Incarnation of Matter.” Robin Wattie and Mathieu Ball’s guitars strike and release in total sync as Wattie’s vocals strain to claim a space above the noise. Several times the tempo stretches out, the music fades to nothing, and then the band snaps tight with even more force than before. “Abating” initiates a sort of suite that continues with “Half Breed” and “Wited, Still and All,” the latter providing a brooding, necessary exhale.
Side B might well be BIG|BRAVE’s high point as a sonic force. “Of This Ilk,” a clear highlight, almost condenses the arc of side A into a single track. The long, slow build of album closer “Vital” ends with a bang, but no sense of conclusion. It leaves the listener with more questions than answers, much like the screams at the end of Slint’s Spiderland or Twin Peaks. For those willing to negotiate with discomfort, it’s a must-listen.