It took four years to follow 2009 masterpiece Sound Awake, but in the some 60 minutes between the bookends of Asymmetry, Karnivool prove it was worth the wait.
The Perth five-piece have taken their sonic trademarks – stirring vocals, complex rhythms, moody soundscapes anchored by forceful riffs – and pushed at the boundaries to daunting but dazzling results.
In the crawling, urgent dissonance of ‘A.M. War’ and the bloodthirsty battering of ‘The Refusal’ is some of their most ferocious aural assaults yet, but more startling is when Asymmetry rumbles rather than roars.
The noodling experimental interludes, the ambient plucks of ‘Float’, the glockenspiel-led, drifting ‘Eidolon’– all show a brave restraint and the most introspective moments the band have yet recorded.
The album’s highest achievement however is when these shades of the beautiful and the brutal thrive in harmonious tandem, simultaneously soothing and savaging.
Producer Nick DiDia does an excellent job of balancing these elements, cultivating Karnivool’s inherent sense of space and atmosphere without undoing their heaving, hammering intensity.
Structurally speaking, the quintet does for prog-leaning hard rock what Gaudi and Gehry did for architecture: defy conventional form and function.
Love Classic Rock?
Get the latest Classic Rock news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
It does take a few listens to overcome the sheer sense of awe at the sprawling sonic construction, but while Asymmetry radiates with complexity, it’s not impenetrable.
Rather than (like many math riff obsessives) get bogged in a colossal web of virtuoso playing, from within the churning maelstrom of technical wizardry emerges discernible grooves and – in the essential siphon of Ian Kenny’s vocals – gripping melodies to soar and sear to. Such as the dramatic ebbs of ‘We Are’ or the mantric coda in ‘Aeons’ of “chemical fires will signal we’re dead.”
Karnivool have delivered another opus that proves them a rare breed, a band that wields artistry like a weapon, exercising their fierce ambition with zero fear of the demands it may impose on the listener.
Chiefly because risking the challenge is worth it – for both audience and artist. Asymmetry is a multi-dimensional accomplishment that’s exhausting, but more so enthralling.
If it’s not one of the best records you’ll hear this year, then it’s one of the most ferociously grand and memorable – guaranteed.
