<p><span><span>- One of Brisbane’s most celebrated practitioners of heaviosity right now happens to be a two-piece named <strong>Chassm</strong>, who between them create the noise of a ferocious storm. They have attracted attention already through high-profile supports with the likes of <strong>Crowbar</strong> and look set to build their base even further with the release of their debut album <em>Falling Forever</em>. </span></span></p>
<p><span><span>As the title suggests, <em>Falling Forever</em> is akin to disappearing indefinitely into a vacuum of velocity and elemental volume. Or, as guitarist/vocalist <strong>Elijah Lee</strong> puts it, “me trying to invent a new emo music that isn’t fucking lame”. </span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Lame this album certainly isn’t. On the contrary, it’s a beast of a record, crammed to the brim with fearsome riffs and rolling drums that manage to be both loose and precise at the same time. The duo blend stacked guitar textures and riffs with pummelling drums to make a near-instrumental attack of savage, atmospheric sludge metal. </span></span></p>
<p><span><span>There are surprises beyond your standard metal record as well, such as the almost theatrical stop-starts and drums fills of <em>Absentia Terra</em>. Another factor that has them standing out from the likes of <strong>Russian Circles</strong> is the occasional placement of vocals throughout the album, ranging from clean singing to blackened shrieks. They don’t turn up that often and when they do, it’s not where you expect. These lyric fragments combine with samples of conversations, spectres of recognisable language fighting to be heard through the pair’s relentless din. </span></span></p>
<p><span><span>There’s straight-up black metal flourishes of blast beats and tremolo picking in <em>OT VIII</em>, with doomy and atmospheric punctuation throughout its eight-minute running time. </span></span></p>
<p><span><span>The ringing arpeggios add a melodic centre to the otherwise crushing penultimate track <em>Drowning</em>. Then it’s the ten-minute <em>Relmless</em> (sic.) shooting us through a doomy vortex, which ebbs and flows but generally increases in speed and intensity, building to a reverbed pile-up that brings the track, and the album, to a very satisfying close. </span></span></p>
<p><span><span>This record is a beautifully paced forty-seven minutes that, despite its experimentation, doesn’t outstay its welcome, managing to make time fly even through epic song lengths. It’s testament to Chassm’s skill that they can create expressionistic, open-ended metal that simultaneously gets straight to the point.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>- Matt Thrower.</span></span></p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=687722998/size=large/bgcol=ff…; seamless><a href="https://chassm.bandcamp.com/album/falling-forever">Falling Forever by Chassm</a></iframe>