Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving | Yield To Despair
Label: Bird’s Robe Records
Release Year: 2015
Country: Australia; Perth
Genre: Post Progressive Post Rock/Noise/Jazz/Gloom
Band Members
Ron Pollard – Piano, Synth
BeHn Stacy – Drums, Noise
Andrew McDonald – Guitar
Luke Pollard – Bass, Samples
Contact Links
Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving Official Website
Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving Official Facebook Page
Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving Official Youtube Channel
Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving Official Bandcamp Shop
It seems once every 10 to 15 years there is a band that totally takes you for a serious mind fuck. In the last 25 years bands like TOOL and Gojira in the Post Rock/Metal world and Oresund Space Collective and Pain Of Salvation in the Psychedelic and Progressive Rock realm have been those bands for me. Just when I thought the strange and eclectic of strange and eclectic comes Perth, Australia’s own Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving.
Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving release Yield Of Despair is a melodic dark abstract of what can be done with fine musicianship and intelligent brainstorms. To say this is a dark abstract is still a understatement Yield Of Despair is like a harmonic black hole that devours the listeners senses for nearly 74 minutes before releasing its melodic bombardment thus leaving you bewildered about what happened. If Stanley Kubrick ever had a abstract negative for music Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving’s Yield Of Despair would be it. I normally go in and totally breakdown a album track by track about now, however this time I will be giving my impressions of each track more so than a full breakdown analysis.
The Albanian Sleepover – Part One begins with some heavy handed fuzzy distortion often found in the doom metal ranks. The drums are totally bottomed towards depths of true despair followed eloquently by a right armed heavy distorted fuzzy bass. Even the rhythm guitar signatures sound like they were played through more a bass amp than a Marshall stack. This is a preface to the listener that their senses are about to be assaulted over the next 74 minutes.
The Albanian Sleepover – Part Two starts off just as brooding as Part One left off. This time it picks up with a far more jazz progression that leads to a more chamber style passage. Make no mistake the album is dark and continues to get darker as this one goes on. There are some deep heavy piano sections with some haunting special effects to accentuate such dark progressions. This all come together around the 5:00 mark and serve the listener with such fear. At the 8:00 mark the drums and distorted bass take this to another dimension of sheer terror before a melancholic piano is included around the 9:00 mark. Then it is a series of more post acid jazz progressions towards the end of the track.
Shaking Off Futility is probably the track that is easiest on the listeners senses. After being hammered with time signatures and brooding progressions from the first two tracks Shaking Off Futility allows the listener to finally begin to digest what has been served to them. It opens with far more gentle piano and rhythmic section passages. This track definitely serves as the bridge to the last half of the project inside the arrangement of the album. The bass and drum rhythmic portions appear to sound as if they were pumped through a foggy filter on this one. This is also the more instrumentally melodic track on Yield Of Despair.
Downbeat starts out liken that of a horror film set to music. There is a desperation appeal to the atmosphere’s on this track. The listener is not only exceptionally assaulted in both right and left channel of the hemisphere’s in the theater of the mind, they are also being hit from back to front. This one comes at you with some of the most intense sonic fury I have heard in recent years within the post progressive rock and metal communities. At the 8:00 mark the fuzzy distortion signatures get very chaotically congested as the listener is now fully engulfed in sheer sonic assaults. Downbeat gives absolutely no remorse or forgiveness. It is a solid storm of melodic bombardment all the way through. About the 12:00 mark the instrumental takes a more Shoegaze/black metal approach with serious double bass drum blast beats with off timed signatures. About the 14:00 mark the track tapers off into a more slow yet complex rhythmic dynamic. The end is almost to doom metal passages.
Yield Of Despair begins with a heavy yet dark piano passage that is almost of chamber music signatures. The piano passages give the listener a sense of mischief and intrigue before the drums come in and cradle it into a wicked distorted dimension. This track sounds like the more improvised track on the album. It is as if the band have taken elements of the previous 4 tracks and used the last title track here as a melting pot or overview of what the listener just experienced. There are several twists and turns in and out of the various signatures and progressions. Yield Of Despair is appropriately arranged in its proper sequence on the album tracking.
I will admit this was one of the most dark yet brooding sonic assaults on my senses in recent memory. Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving have taken Post Progressive Rock/Metal in a totally different dimension. I believe they are pioneers towards a new level in this genre. Yield Of Despair is exceptionally dark and terrifying at times. If you think you knew about this genre of prog think again. I give this a 4/5 of sheer guts and originality.
