ASUNDER, SWEET AND OTHER DISTRESS

I have always thought of this band as the evolution of punk to its inevitable refinement or decadence considering its starting point in the stylistic cycle. Musically speaking its raunchiness, eclecticness and irreverent spirit surely owe a lot to that, then, underground style. Of course, the also inevitable, technological refinement has turned what once was horrible and rebelious noisy reverb into an extension of the music itself, which is fun but not that original in the electronic or RiO category in this Prog world (neither in its current PA address) or even in the outer worlds of Prog .

Outside of Prog the loved as hated Neil Young's solo, 1991, "ARC" or his multiple "with Crazy Horse" recordings or a more recent work like "Le noise", not to mention, other musicians which are into these noisy fields as Sonic Youth or the more obscure Cabaret Voltaire and of course, the primitive but effective, Sex Pistols themselves, playing with this NOISE/Rock in the outskirts of Prog for a while.

Therefore in comparison to those hearings, this kind of noisy "symphonic" sonic/rock environments, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress" proposes, in this today's world, well are not exactly the discovery of America!

Anyway, in this "Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress",(2015), they dwell too much into those muddy sonic-environments, and more than once they just come up with nothing but mud. I suppose you have to be a super loyal fan of the band or really be immersed in their conceptual image to listen to something beyond this, but music wise I really did not find anything truly relevant or at least interesting or really original.

To be optimistic I will mention that this is all instrumental and there are some nice contrasts between the acoustic and electronic ones here and there mostly found between the violins and the wall of "music school musicians' " noise/rock/post-punk, which ended up being more elegantly named and accepted in this Prog world as Post Rock/Math Rock.

To be honest **2.5 PA stars tops!