Vancouver's Auroch are the sister band to experimental death metal group Mitochondrion; as well as sharing members (the former's vocalist/guitarist Sebastian Montesi serves as live bassist for the latter, while the latter's vocalist/guitarist Shawn Haché plays bass in the former), the pair of bands share a penchant for the blazingly technical, the profoundly textural and the deeply experimental, like a binary star shares matter. Taman Shud is the second full-length record from Auroch, and the record's name is a reference to both the Persian word for "finished" and an enduring mystery: in 1948, a man was found dead on an Australian beach with the phrase "taman shud," scrawled on the final page of the Rubaiyat, in a hidden pocket of his pants. He has never been identified, nor has his cause of death ever been established.
A marked step forward from their debut From Forgotten Worlds, with Taman Shud Auroch channel a sense of the dense complexity of this case, of competing facts and clues that lead nowhere, combined with the finality and ultimate simplicity of death. The blistering intensity and relentlessness of tracks like "Toxic Plume" are balanced against the haunted acoustic guitar passages and eerie, half-heard whispers of "The Balkan Affair," allowing for horror to creep in on several levels. The record is also more layered, almost sedimentary in its construction; in particular, the multiple vocal tracks on "Death Canonized" are used to a savage and overwhelming effect. There is a greater sense of abundance, of deluge and the sublime to this record, and it serves Auroch well.
(Profound Lore)A marked step forward from their debut From Forgotten Worlds, with Taman Shud Auroch channel a sense of the dense complexity of this case, of competing facts and clues that lead nowhere, combined with the finality and ultimate simplicity of death. The blistering intensity and relentlessness of tracks like "Toxic Plume" are balanced against the haunted acoustic guitar passages and eerie, half-heard whispers of "The Balkan Affair," allowing for horror to creep in on several levels. The record is also more layered, almost sedimentary in its construction; in particular, the multiple vocal tracks on "Death Canonized" are used to a savage and overwhelming effect. There is a greater sense of abundance, of deluge and the sublime to this record, and it serves Auroch well.
