After a five-year gap in new material, Intronaut return with Fluid Existential Inversions. During the period between the release of their 2015 album The Direction of Last Things and this, the band said goodbye to longtime drummer Danny Walker and the band left their record label Century Media for greener pastures with Metal Blade.
At the heart of the band as usual are the excellent guitar duo of Sacha Dunable and Dave Timnick as well as bassist Joe Lester. How does album number six hold up after a long hiatus?
After an intro track to get things going the band breaks out “Cubensis,” a polyrhythmic tour de force, one that should hook longtime fans with the many different movements of overt heaviness combined with sections of post metal ambiance. The guitar interplay here is quite complex, showing that both Dunable and Timnick know exactly how to play off each other as well.
“Contrapasso” is a slow-paced crawl that gives way to some progressive tinged speed and vocal harmonies courtesy of the guitar section. The middle ambient section of this song feels like anything they have been writing since Prehistoricisms. That sound continues to make Intronaut a unique band in the scene to this day.
The closing duo of “Pangloss” and “Sour Everythings” are the best individual tracks for bassist Joe Lester. Generally it felt like he might have taken a back seat on this album as a whole, but that is a minor knock on a solid album from a longstanding band, primed to pick up from where they left off.
Fluid Existential Inversions is a great intro to the band if you haven’t given them the time of day before, or if you have followed them since Void all those years ago. This album only gets better on repeated listens and with enough nuance to shake a stick at, there should be plenty to hear again and again.
(released February 28, 2020 on Metal Blade Records)
