Calm Collapse – Mirrored Nature

Sometimes, two words can speak more than an essay. In this case specifically, those were the words “holy shit,” which dropped involuntarily from my lips around thirty seconds into the impossibly huge “Positive Greed,” the opening track from Seattle supergroup Calm Collapse. And as the track rolled on and folded out into the rest of the record, those two words were the purest distillation of my reaction.

The elder members of Calm Collapse are no strangers to hard-hitting guitar-oriented rock music. Drummer/keyboardist Rob Smith is a member of 90s alt-rockers Traindodge, as well as spacious heavy metallers Museum of Light. Vocalist/guitarist Doug Lorig was the main creative force behind the angular math rock of Roadside Monument, a band whose reputation has only recently started to match what they deserved.

But Calm Collapse is so much more than the alchemical sum of its members’ unique histories. It’s far grittier, far more muscular, and far, far heavier than anything they’ve touched before. Many moments are almost completely sludge metal, buoyed by Lorig’s voice and the wide-open atmospheres the songs live in. Guitars shift from crunching detuned riffs to reverb-drenched post rocky ambience, occasionally bursting into fiery solos that would make any classic rock aficionado happy. The bass, courtesy of relative newcomer Jon Pease, is almost always overdriven, running along the lower end like General Sherman marching to sea. This balance between heaviness and atmosphere is coaxed along by producer Matt Bayles, known for his work with metal legends like Mastodon and ISIS.

For all its heft, it’s an incredibly catchy record. In a lot of ways, the interplay between the metal-tinged instrumentation and Lorig’s sonorous voice reminds me of 90s alt rock bands like HUM, Shiner, and Failure: bands that managed to capture the heaviness of metal riffs without actually crossing into metal themselves, blending those crushing riffs with syrupy hooks that won’t leave your ear soon.

Mirrored Nature is out now through Spartan Records.

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