Trees   

Sickness In

Crucial Blast 2013

US droning nihilists, Trees, have returned with a new album, Sickness In.  And as one might imagine from the album's title, this is a twisted descent into blackened oblivion.  Slowly ascending monoliths of guitar riffs rise from the tidal wave of sound obliterate everything in their wake as Cover Your Mouth begins.  Demented, blackened screams serve as vocals and you can almost detect the feral beast lurking within his soul.  The overall sound reminds me of a cross between Winter and Abruptum.  There is a loose form to each song but it's murky and morbid as riffs and drums collide haphazardly with vocal shrieks.  The reverb heavy riffs plod along, shattering bones and sanity under their weight.  At around the 9 minute mark there is a wailing guitar that devolves into languid shifts of gargantuan ugliness.  The second/final track, Perish, continues in much of the same manner.  After squealing guitars and some Himalayan throat chants, titanic riffs smash and smother your ear drums while lethargic beats drip across the sonic fabric of the song.  The vocals are even more acidic and vicious than the previous track and they scratch and claw their way through those towering, reverberating riffs.  The guitars continue to squeal with long treacherous arcs and then submit once again to megalithic chords.  Trees have once again crafted an album that is like a slow-motion audio sledgehammer.  The riffs and drums methodically and relentlessly pound away at your psyche and leave nothing but dust.