The thing about music is, it doesn't really stop. And so, while we're hard work on our 2022 End of Year content, there are bands out there already gearing up for their 2023 releases and we want to make sure we don't miss the train on the better of those. Enter the curiously named Ropes Inside A Hole and their upcoming release, A Man and His Nature, due out tomorrow via Voice of the Unheard/Shove Records. We're talking about a somber, melancholic, and very impactful kind of post-metal here, which is not surprising when you take into account this group features members of Suffocate For Fuck Sake. In any case, head on down below to stream the album in full!
I have to admit, I haven't really been meshing with this style of post-metal for a long while now but this is some really good stuff. More than anything, Ropes Inside A Hole are patient, taking their time to build this album up to the eventual heights it reaches. But those buildups are good pieces of music in their own right, like moving opener "Distance". It's not just a track that's there to serve as a foil for whatever comes next, but rather a well-written and executed piece in its own right; I love the sparse use of strings, the way its main riff calls back to itself across the track and, yes, the eventual explosive and massive outro.
Elsewhere, songs like "Loss and Grief" and "Feet In the Swamp, Gaze to the Sky" display the band's penchant for more off-kilter, twisting compositions that remind me of the early days of Riverside or the chasm like depths of Latitudes. Their music has the same kind of urban melancholy mixed with psychological concepts that the former's early years contained while channeling a lot of the depressive/oppressive vibes of the former through cleverly constructed post-metal tropes. Whatever the reference might be, Ropes Inside A Hole continue to elaborate on the basic musical ideas and building blocks of the album throughout, creating an intimate and intricate piece of music.
You can head on over to their Bandcamp page to pre-order this album before it drops tomorrow, the 10th of January 2023.