Some bands are so far ahead of the curve that time is only just catching up, and that’s certainly the case with VENUES. Signposting the future of metal, they’ve a genre-busting sound that deftly defies easy categorisation. After releasing two strong albums, VENUES have stepped up a level with their latest long player Transience, a record that’s sure to take them to the biggest stages, and get them there in some style.
With their hard, yet melodic, sound it certainly feels as if VENUES are tapping into the current zeitgeist, but they’re in no way jumping on a bandwagon as a cursory listen to their previous records (2018’s Aspire and 2021’s Solace) will attest. However, it feels as if those albums were staging posts, apprenticeships almost, towards Transience and now the band are really starting to blossom. That becomes most evident on opening track ‘Godspeed, Goodbye’ where the band set about patiently building evocative soundscapes. This is no quick sugar rush, rather a slow release of energy that filters into the listener’s every fibre, so much so that it seems to alter your very physiology. Opening like a lotus flower, it reveals its delights in incremental stages, meaning that when the gruff vocals and the guitars and drums kick in, they kick in hard. Heavy as hell, yet infused with a strong sense of melody, this is music to which you can both dance and mosh (and possibly both at the same time.
It’s the twin vocal attack from which VENUES derive much of their power; the clean, crystalline tone of Lela Gruber and the guttural, growling of Robin Baumann. Something very magical happens when they entwine; it’s fire and ice, beauty and the beast, and it pulls the listener in two direction between the light and shade. It’s this tension of opposites that ensures tracks such as ‘Reflections’ (and indeed the whole album) are both heavy and lithe. Yet, sometimes we can overanalyse music; often it’s best to sit back and bask in the glory of cuts such as ‘Oblivion’ and ‘Cravings’ and just concede that they are just great, great, great songs. It’s the final song which turns out to be the album’s pièce de résistance and ‘Coming Home’ hits high on the emotional scale. Adding layers of sound, almost imperceptibly, ‘Coming Home’ submerges the listener in the deepest water and ensures that Transience is anything but transient.
- Transience is released via Arising Empire on 29th March 2024.
Track List:
- Godspeed, Goodbye
- Haunted House
- Braille
- Unspoken Words
- Bad Karma
- Reflections
- Radiate Me
- Oblivion
- Cravings
- Coming Home
