We are in the midst of a doom renaissance. With bands like Pallbearer and 40 Watt Sun consistently exploring the limits of what can be created with a palette composed of crushing heaviness, doom is becoming more nuanced, intelligent and creative. Onto that scene step upstate New York doomsters Hush, who have wrought a raw and achingly melodic record with their debut, Unexist. While one of doom's universal characteristics is a profound heaviness, created with glacial pacing and burdensome riffs, Hush somehow make the idea of musical weight fresh again.
The rules of musical gravity are different for Unexist, the way that the value of weight and mass changes on other planets; at some moments, like on "Infinite Recursion," there is an eerie, mournful lightness, as though the listener is becoming untethered from a lonely moon that lacks the gravity to hold on. Elsewhere, like on the ten-and-a-half minute "Rest/Nonexistence," the long, strangely droning introduction feels like falling through the seemingly endless atmosphere of a gas giant, only to be crushed when you finally hit the solid ground of the core. Like futuristic physicists, Hush fold musical gravity in on itself, and explore a much richer and stranger landscape in the process.
(Independent)The rules of musical gravity are different for Unexist, the way that the value of weight and mass changes on other planets; at some moments, like on "Infinite Recursion," there is an eerie, mournful lightness, as though the listener is becoming untethered from a lonely moon that lacks the gravity to hold on. Elsewhere, like on the ten-and-a-half minute "Rest/Nonexistence," the long, strangely droning introduction feels like falling through the seemingly endless atmosphere of a gas giant, only to be crushed when you finally hit the solid ground of the core. Like futuristic physicists, Hush fold musical gravity in on itself, and explore a much richer and stranger landscape in the process.