Aseethe, the trio of guitarist Brian Barr, drummer Eric Diercks, and bassist Noah Koester, carve their own path in the world of heavy music. A singular blend of seismic weight, mesmeric drone, and gripping tension is the Midwestern band’s musical signature. Driven by an exploratory ethos, Aseethe warp sounds into emotionally potent songs that are as detailed as they are immense. The Cost is an album shadowed by devastating losses, a visceral study in aftermaths, centered around how life moves forward after personal and universal traumas.
A deft balance of abrasive textures surrounding a meditative core is a hallmark of Aseethe’s sound, and on The Cost these qualities are amplified to the extreme. While grappling with the varied and intense changes in their lives, the trio melded the immediacy of the hardcore and thrash music they were raised on with a modern minimalist emphasis on droned and longform sounds. The resulting songs seamlessly fluctuate between delicate, lush arrangements layered with stately piano, fizzing synthesizers and reverberating guitars and equally stirring incendiary eruptions. Title track “The Cost” is a work of several movements morphing from a syncopated dirge to ethereal melodicism before it lurches to a climax, only to disintegrate into orchestral-like flutters. The more direct “The Air is Caving In” and “Last Time I Do Anything For a Fucking Friend Ever” are powerful bursts that bring their hardcore backgrounds to the forefront with passages of molten sludge and tempos that push well past anything Aseethe have done before. Album closer “Irrelevance” a more complex piece, in many ways a mirror image of “The Cost”, it’s movements of undulating crescendos coalescing in melodic peaks, repaying patience with captivating riffs.
Recorded by acclaimed producer/engineer Sanford Parker (Pelican, Eyehategod, Yob, Voivod) at Electrical Audio in Chicago, The Cost is more focused and elaborate than anything the band have crafted before, expanding Aseethe’s dynamic palette with more nuance and transforming their battering sound into cathartic arcs. Says Barr, “It’s still down-tuned and heavy, but we were deliberately trying to make a record that uses our own musical language to make something that was representative of the musicians we are.”
On The Cost, Aseethe’s detailed textural movements and punishing guitar passages each carry considerable emotional resonance. The album is abounding in both the skillful arrangements and the poignance the songs deliver. It is a moving, singular and adventurous record by an iconic midwestern band who has always chosen the road less traveled.
