Black metal. It's everywhere. So thus begs the question of what's worth approaching and what's worth tossing aside? The saturation of the genre can make approach both daunting but enticing. And while you can find a thousand dime-a-dozen bands it's not too often you run across bands like Thaw.
The Sosnowiec, Poland five-piece has been producing albums since 2010. Thaw is something that's a little different but not so different that they've been looking to alienate their audience or attempt to build a larger fan base. The way the band carries themselves, I doubt they give a single shit whether it expands or shrinks. And their latest effort Earth Ground expands and evolves beyond previous works, bringing Thaw to full recognition.
Earth Ground is probably best described as droning black metal with Norwegian black metal influences. As a sentence, it doesn't sound that great, in fact it sounds almost base. Earth Ground is anything but. The album spans eight tracks that can blister and bruise as viciously as they can swoon. Thaw as a unit is both hypnotic and aggressive. However songs don't twist and turn so much as they transition and fade. It's a shifting of moods that Thaw shoots for and they pull it off with flying colors. Tracks like “No Light” remain persistent and crushing in their approach. The weathered, cracked vocals at about three minutes pick up the swing of things and bring out a vicious side the band had already been building toward.
The noise influence is something that truly drives Earth Ground as well. Songs like “Second Day” are ecstatic and rabid. Though Thaw doesn't go too nuts with the noise influence and try to make it their personality, it is present. Whether it be the buzz during the intro of “Sun” or the humming feedback/wah of “Last Day,” the band establishes mood with a purpose; mixing a hollow mid-tempo punch with fluttering noise in “Last Day” (one of the album's best tracks). It helps bring out a darker purpose in Earth Ground. Something more bizarre that lurks beyond the snow-capped mountains of madness that are ever present.
What Earth Ground pulls off, perhaps better than anything else, is its sense of of coldness. The album has a chilly effect. From the intro track “First Day” to the final piece “Last Day,” the recording has an icy feeling surrounding it. It feels like it was recorded during the coldest session of winter weather in Poland. Parts like the aforementioned “No Light” bring out a real feeling of ice crystals spreading over windows. Other songs like “Winters Bone” are feel like the sharp, painful winds of January. The slow cymbal strikes and distant guitar at the three-minute forty-second mark are like icicles falling. Seriously, pieces of this album are like air conditioning. It's wonderful.
It's hard to pull off the vicious/beautiful genre but Thaw's Earth Control have done it. And as a standard, I really hate writing that something is brutally beautiful, but when it is there's no way around it. For Thaw, this album is a great leap forward. The noise effects are used excellently, the album has a great blend of aggression and regression and everything feels as bleak as it should be. If the band called it quits now (please don't), they would have gone out on a great note. Earth Ground is an awesome album from a band that deserves far more attention than they're getting. Winter is coming and your soundtrack has arrived.
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