We pretend not to, but we forget about bands all the time here. I forgot about – what’s that band? – Fear Factory last week and just now forgot that my last introduction was also about forgetting. In part I have to blame the burning n00b fumes, skull pit wounds, and brain-hemorrhaging metalcore for the memory loss. Likewise, I could tell you that I forget stuff because my brain runs on eight-inch floppy discs, but in reality I made the transition to 3.5” years ago and am just bad at keeping current. Suffice it to say that I forgot about Moloken.
I shouldn’t have, though. Five years ago, All is Left to See was one of the more difficult-to-classify albums to land on my desk, and I’m still impressed by its artful and warm mix of post-metal and doom. Unveilance of Dark Matter takes much the same approach, but heavier. It trades in a bit of introspection for a bit more aggression, creating a sound that hyphenates death-doom to post-punk. Steady rhythms and angular, dissonant riffing dominate Unveilance’s songs, allying the record with Flourishing’s underappreciated The Sum of All Fossils.
But of course Moloken are still romantics, and Unveilance is an empathic record that affords the listener space and safety. The band use three interludes – “No Ease No Rest,” “Repressed,” and “I Still Can’t Hear You” – to shake off the steady foreboding for a moment and play more intimate, less noisy compositions. They help break up the steadiness of the album’s other songs to some degree, but the real reason those songs work isn’t track listing. You can blame that on Jakob Burstedt’s energetic drumming, which propels the album forward with lean beats and attention-grabbing fills. Burstedt is the backbone of songs like “Venom Love” and “Surcease,” the album’s most Flourishing composition.
Burstedt can’t run an album all by his lonesome, though, and Unveilance’s quieter moments at times do fall flat without him. In “Lingering Demise,” guitars and bass break out alone for an extended trio that builds for two minutes but dies right as the band should reinvigorate it. All that lost potential just to be clever? The “Lingering Demise” trio could have been the centerpiece for a monstrous final track stretching to ten minutes to end the album. Instead, Unveilance of Dark Matter continues on with “Unbearable” and ends after another interlude and its lackluster title track. “Unbearable” is actually one of the album’s best songs in the vein of The Sum of All Fossils, but I would appreciate it much more were it not stuck behind such a letdown.
All is Left to See was a very interesting record from a band with a unique take on post metal and doom. But it was also discursive and spread its ideas too thin, as if Moloken were jealously guarding against the intrusion of even the vaguest commercial influence. Unveilance sees the band much more confident but still too clever by half. The band’s lack of strong compositional instinct makes them waylay themselves by expanding forgettable ideas (“Unveilance of Dark Matter”) and hobble themselves neglecting their best ones (“Lingering Demise”). That makes for a disappointing back half to a record that begins with a lot of promise. Unveilance of Dark Matter is far from ruined by these missteps, but it could have been a much stronger release. I hate to relegate records to the memory hole with such lukewarm praise, but until these Swedes build an album greater than the sum of its parts, I’m afraid I won’t recall them very often.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: The Sign Records
Websites: moloken.bandcamp.com | moloken.net | facebook.com/moloken
Releases Worldwide: January 31st, 2020
