Band:	Unfurl
Album:	Ascension
Style:	Blackened hardcore, Progressive hardcore
Release date:	June 2023

01. Coiled Serpent
02. Gossamer Ladder
03. Trembling In The Threshold
04. Burning Question
05. This Empty Planet
06. Hyperviolet Estuary
07. Entity Reunion In The Sky
08. Longitudes & Leylines

The band Wake have had one of the most intriguing musical trajectories of recent years, going from a pretty straightforward grindcore sound to a more elaborate extreme metal style that has roots in death metal, but also incorporates aspects of prog and post-metal. With Ascension, Unfurl appear to be attempting to speedrun this entire journey within the span of one album.

Such musical ambition isn’t necessarily new territory for Pittsburgh’s Unfurl; previous album The Waking Void also had longer tracks with a wider dynamic range. Still, there was plenty of room left into which they could expand on their next outing, and Ascension is a smorgasbord of ideas compacted down into a tight, fluid album. First impressions root Unfurl somewhere within a genre with -core on the end; ‘hardcore’ seems a tad ill-fitting given the extremity found within the early songs on Ascension, but at the same time deathcore and grindcore only seem to be present in brief moments, and while there is technicality and a progressive slant, it’s hard to class the album as mathcore either. It’s just multifaceted, belligerent intensity.

The album opens with one of its more elaborate compositions; “Coiled Serpent” is perhaps the closest of any track here to deathcore, with some pounding breakdown passages, but there’s also a blackened edge to moments later on, as well as a riff early on that has more in line with tech-death. It’s quite a long song for such overwhelming fury; the next few are more compact forms of extremity, whether it’s the mathy assault on “Gossamer Ladder”, the slow grim beating offered by “Trembling In The Threshold”, or the putrid, noisy trudge that is “This Empty Planet”.

At this point of the record, there’s been nearly 20 minutes of music that have offered nary a glimpse of sunlight peaking through the thick smog engulfing the album. “Hyperviolet Estuary” represents a pivotal turning point for the album; an arpeggiated opening riff is joined by riffs that are less hardcore and more post-hardcore, introducing some hint of melody for the first time, before the sickening shrieked vocals that have up to this point been the only voice on the record are joined by a gentle clean singing voice that one would arguably expect to hear on a shoegaze or alt rock record. While there’s still a definite heaviness to this song, so much more colour has been introduced to what seemed to be an ocean of black.

I’ve seen some reviews that consider this shift to be jarring; it is a considerable shift, but it’s not one that I’ve found to be disjointed, and certainly not unwelcome. The first bunch of songs on Ascension are delightfully malevolent, but it’s really enjoyable to see them expand their range as the record progresses, while still maintaining a good amount of heaviness and intensity. “Entity Reunion In The Sky” is still nowhere close to being accessible; early on, it has the kind of complex yet ugly guitarwork that characterized early Between The Buried And Me records, but later it pivots more towards the dual-vocal elaborate sludgy brutality of Conjurer. Yet when they subsequently venture into clean tranquillity, it’s not unearned; this softer side of Unfurl bears some resemblance to Bossk, or perhaps In The Absence Of Truth-era Isis, particularly with the mellow keyboards in the background. This post-metal mindset is also joined by a touch of prog, as dense textured riffs trade off with more technical playing.

“Longitudes & Leylines” carries on in much the same vein as “Entity Reunion In The Sky”; there’s post-rock/metal delicacy, but also gnarly proggy hardcore groove. A clean vocal passage midway through even sends my mind a bit to some of Spaceslug’s material, as the distant-sounding singing floats amidst walls of dense Amenra-esque riffs, and the closing stages aren’t all that far away from some more textured alternative rock/shoegaze. I could understand why a fan of one half of the record might be thrown off or unable to gel with the material in the other half, but I feel like it all comes together excellently; the musical pounding that the first few songs serves up just makes the expanded range of the last couple of tracks all that more alluring.