III: Absolution CANDLELIGHT
Winterfylleth frontman recalls his doom-laden past
Atavist: good grief
MANCHESTER’S ATAVIST EMERGED at a time when the UK sludge and drone scenes were mushrooming, and although their last album, 2007’s II: Ruined, broke up the unidimensional extremity with weepy piano and Rose Kemp’s guest vocals, few seemed to mourn their absence over the last 13 years. Perhaps that’s because guitarist Chris Naughton founded excellent ‘English Heritage black metal’ band Winterfylleth, a far more successful, celebratory unit, glorying in England’s nature and history with an aesthetic detail that Atavist concertedly lacked. This was a band so despondently unwilling to communicate, they couldn’t even be arsed to name their songs.
With the original line-up regrouped, Atavist have revised the aloof bloodymindedness of that approach, III: Absolution managing with just a few words to convey a life-altering journey across its four lumbering tracks: Loss, Struggle, Self-Realisation and Absolution.