Horrendous: Anareta

The Philadelphia death metal trio Horrendous were dubbed vintage revivalists just three years ago, with their 2012 debut The Chills. But their sound opened up drastically for Ecdysis, the album's glimpses of outside influences earning the band increased attention. On Anareta, a record captured during one obsessive, month-long session spent sequestered in bandleader Damian Herring's home studio, Horrendous' playbook feels truly open. It's as if, bona fides well established, the band set out to form a link between the past they once embraced and a future they imagine.

This shift is as clear during opener "The Nihilist", where seething whispers curl around a complex math-metal figure, as it is during closer "The Solipsist", where a kaleidoscopic melody spins like a spotlight inside a thrash metal bulwark. There are references to antecedents throughout: "Stillborn Gods" invokes Slayer, while moments of "Ozymandias" sound like a Big Four mixtape. The legacy of Swedish death metal looms large, too. But these are the foundations from which Horrendous now sprawl—with bright solos that whip in the wind, with rubber-band basslines that run counterclockwise to the leads, with whiplash rhythms that suggest a short-circuiting carnival ride.

Through all of these twists and churns, the band never seems to be showing off its dexterity, or attempting transitions for their own sake. Horrendous have become masters of pacing and dynamics, instinctively knowing when to let the album and audience breathe. "Polaris" progresses from doom metal to black metal to death metal and back to doom seamlessly, as though a DJ had spent hours perfecting the cuts between it all. On the first five minutes of "Acolytes", they plow through a grindcore sprint and settle into a dense and demanding death-metal section, with a squealing little riff tucked carefully into a rhythm section that refuses to sit still. These additions lend the momentum of mystery to these songs, which surprise every time you hear them.

One of the most glorious moments on the album, and in metal this year, arrives as a revelation at the end of "Acolytes". Unexpectedly, the guitar stalls, locking into one glowing note as the drums retreat into a low-tempo tap. Then, a new arching riff radiates outward, as though the guitar has suddenly emerged from a mountain's shadow and into the midday sun. The drums double and triple their pace, while Herring musters one final, fade-away scream, like a hero taking his leave of a scene. It's a beautiful passage, as redemptive as anything on Deafheaven's Sunbather and as cathartic as the closing moments of a symphony.

Though they sound quite different, Anareta has a lot in common with my other favorite metal album of the year, Tribulation's The Children of the Night. On their earliest albums, both bands wrestled with the past, rendering death metal anew as competent revivalists. But in 2015, they have both stretched those traditions, filling accepted frameworks with unlikely elements. The influences are still recognizable, but the results are no longer obvious. This quest even comes written into Anareta's wonderfully narrative lyrics, where the aim for mortal meaning serves as the cri de cœur. "Forging a new reality/ Embrace the burning dawn in me," goes the end of "Acolytes". Indeed, metal can value faithful, enthusiastic recreations more than heretical ingenuity, and vice versa. But like Tribulation, Horrendous show the value of compromise within a record that creates its own middle ground—and stands right there for eight tracks, stunning.