Band:	Rosetta
Album:	The Anaesthete
Style:	Post-metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	August 2013

01. Ryu / Tradition
02. Fudo / The Immovable Deity
03. In & Yo / Dualities Of The Way
04. Oku / The Secrets
05. Hodoku / Compassion
06. Myo / The Miraculous
07. Hara / The Center
08. Ku / Emptiness
09. Shugyo / Austerity

The contrasts of The Aneasthete are conceived with clarity of sound in Rosetta's first independent release. With the tightening of composition a clearly noticeable divide emerges between the two extremes of a life threatening sludge assault and the deft touch of melody. In the attempt to bridge this divide the band's style has been one that fluctuates between a varied grunge/hardcore accentuated edge of post metal and post rock. This album is a venture further away from the latter, though not entirely leaving their style behind, to something more firmly metal.

The clear guitar sound, the beat of the drums and the rhythm structures are this album's most tangible anaesthetics and they are applied with surgical precision, their gradual and continued application ensuring the dulling of all senses save your hearing. You won't be able to move as you're fixed in a mostly painless and numbed state, aware of only the percussive lifeblood and the skilful guitars which work around you.

It's something of a tradition of the band to absorb and make use of an element of space rock in their sound, so it's only fitting that this is best preserved in the opening track "Ryu/Tradition" with an entrancing back layer of whirring effects. However it receives less of an emphasis on The Anaesthete than Rosetta previously mixed into their sound.

Some might describe this element as taking on an unassuming drone at times. It is particularly in the album's quieter moments that it shapes the underlying movement in the music though the finality apparent in "Shugyo/Austerity" is the obvious exception to this as the track, and thus the album, closes in distortion and a heavy drone.

Throughout the album the listener is afforded certain comforts such as the warm embrace of "Hoduku/Compassion" with the vocal work washed clean of all their prevalent coarseness, the humming of bass and a calming piano passage to lead you out. Subsequent to this Rosetta decides, after having made such graceful use of it, to throw the entire piano at you with the crushing force of their returning sludge sinews and a powerful roar in "Myo/The Miraculous." Thankfully you're still under heavy sedation.

However, the starkest contrast with the album's more graceful moments is "Oku/The Secrets" which could potentially grab the neck of Neurosis and brutally throttle with the sludge thick riffs and likely shatter teeth with the screech of the guitars.

Tranquility returns with the humble bass forming the calming epicentre of "Hara/The Centre" which peripherally extends to a crescendo of melody, or the initial atmospheric expanse of "Ku/Emptiness" again with a formative yet non-threatening bass line. The latter track seems to gradually accumulate weight as it runs its eight minute instrumental course and by the end is fuller rather than emptier with only an absence of vocals.

The Aneasthete is distinctive in the broad range of its temperament; the gap between the album's heaviest as opposed to lightest sounds is filled with varied degrees of intensity. Much of the album is consistently engaging as the build-up to the frequent climaxes is reached by continual momentum. There are moments in which the momentum slows and keeps to a standard tread yet Rosetta don't seek to remould the post metal genre, especially considering they adamantly deny its existence or legitimacy as a genre. To my ears, however, this album is strengthened by its emphasis on post metal and the genre's defining qualities.