Retreat!Retreat!

24thoughtspersecond:

“Tunnel Blanket” is the third proper full length from THIS WILL DESTROY YOU. It is the product of over two years of having the abyss stare back at the creator and, in turn, the creators lashing back at it with everything they’ve got. While previous albums managed to strike a universal chord of human hope and near-optimism toward the future, “Tunnel Blanket” is the darker and more intricate sides of human emotion, grief, and tragedy. It’s “pretty” in the way decomposition is pretty. It’s “artful” in the precise way that a sniper’s bullet passes through the largest artery is artful.

As the aural whallop of album-opener “Little Smoke” slams into listener consciousnesses just before the 3:00 mark, it become readily apparent that this album is about to take everyone involved down a very stark, bleak, and entirely introspective path. Whereas “Young Mountain” and “S/T” could be played in bookstores, coffee shops, and surfing videos, the blackened density of “Tunnel Blanket” commands and provides entire immersion between the recording and the listener. This is not background music and you’re not going to play it at family gatherings (save for perhaps a particularly dark funeral).

The songs of “Tunnel Blanket” seemingly represent the varying stages of grief and, fittingly, are often-paralyzing. Passages like “Glass Realms,” “Reprise” and “Osario” are haunting canvases of nostalgia, loss, and overwhelming despair. Slabs like “Communal Blood” and “Black Dunes” are glacially-paced, yet somehow the most violent and eruptive that contemporary music itself is even capable of. Envision not man-made pyrotechnics when trying to process the sounds of the latter. Think of volcanoes no longer being able to contain themselves and seeping out across scorched earth. Think of ice shelves collapsing after centuries. Think of the bodies of men that have been bludgeoned into nothing but fine pulp. 

There is still beauty in the latest from THIS WILL DESTROY YOU. In fact, this could easily be described as the most beautiful album the band has ever made. Yet it’s an entirely unconventional beauty that taps far below the soil that most bands dig their safe heels upon. In essence, “Tunnel Blanket” is humanity itself during its most beaten down and darkened times. It is the sonic equivalent of being buried alive and needing to scratch and claw back to the air above for mere survival. And at the end, it’s just as cathartic, instinctively primal, and wholly rewarding. 

I just…you guys…you guys don’t know how much I love this album. The description is beautiful. The record and sleeve are beautiful. And God, my God the sonic power and emotion of the thing…Tunnel Blanket is just absolutely magnificent. 

I’m spoiling my end of the year Album list, I know. But I mean, c’mon. It’s just…just look at the damn thing won’t you?

I want a record player just to get this on Vinyl. It is glorious.