Hailing from the “if it ain’t broke…” school of thought, Mike Scheidt continues to drive his band YOB to new heights of epic, darkly spiritual doom without consideration for trends, self-consciousness or the whims of fickle consumers. At 62 minutes yet only four songs, Clearing the Path to Ascend rewards the patient while almost deliberately snubbing the ADD set. In other words, a typical YOB album.
The only sign that business may be anything other than usual comes with the opening of the second track, “Nothing to Win”, a boldly discordant, nearly industrialized post-metal take on doom that bears a distinctive Neurosis influence. It’s not jarringly outside of Scheidt’s typical wheelhouse, but it serves as reminder that the band recently left their longtime home on Profound Lore for the relatively unfamiliar climes of Neurot, the label run by Neurosis’ own Scott Kelly (whose guest vocals actually graced “Before We Dreamed of Two”, a song on the previous YOB album, Atma).
In fact, Kelly’s acoustic singer-songwriter sets (in his spare time Kelly does his best to channel the ghost of the late, great Townes Van Zandt) inspired Mike Scheidt to try his own hand at an acoustic album following the Atma tour cycle. That album, Stay Awake, was coolly received by those who heard it at all, but it did serve to entrench Scheidt and his bandmates into the Neurot circle.
Anyway, “Nothing to Win” brings an uptempo balance to a collection that otherwise consists of Scheidt’s brooding, ruminative meditations on life, death, and the various Eastern philosophies he’s assimilated to bridge the two together for himself. “Unmask the Spectre” is the most grimly loaded of these tracks, a sandpaper massage of the soul that acts as a thorough drain of any life-affirming inclinations you may have rebuilt within you since we last heard from YOB.
And yet, when that has concluded, “Marrow” has still another 19 minutes of bleak psychic residue to purge you of. Scheidt’s varied singing voice turns wistful and longing here, a palliative to the wringer he’s just put us through. Nonetheless, his tone is one more of relief than hope. The forlorn guitar tone ensures that any yearning present in Scheidt’s singing fatally undercuts any sense of a victory lap being taken.
YOB have had heavier albums, but they haven’t had any that are more emotionally exhausting. Scheidt uses art as catharsis, and that means you as listener as well if you want to take that journey with him. If you’re up for it, it’s more than worth it.
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