If you’ve ever encountered the nightmarish, psychologically-driven horror of uniquely disquieting movie director Ari Aster, you should already have a fairly accurate idea of the type of listening experience that awaits within this colossal, densely-orchestrated assault on the senses. Indeed, much like the slow but steadily inexorable cold drip of mounting hysteria that resides in grief-stricken 2018 chiller Hereditary or Midsommar’s tangibly heavy aura of crushing melancholia and harrowing scenes of gore-stricken mutilation, the aptly-titled Abhorrence derives from similarly bleak thematic territory (minus the accidental decapitations and ritual sacrifices). And just as Aster’s ghoulish cinematic visions frequently find even the most hardened horror fanatic squirming in their seat like the proverbial worm wriggling on the end of a fishhook, New Jersey aggressors COGNITIVE’s latest mammoth, genre-twisting studio album makes for an equally brutal and disorientating affair.
With an intrepid, if at times rather indeterminate, sonic formula favouring generous application of humongous, weightily chugging groove, breakneck hyperblasts and bewilderingly intricate technical riffery, Abhorrence is a record brimming with an abundance of compositional ingenuity and ideas — the majority of which are executed to nimbly manipulated and engaging effect.
Within a stylistically expansive repertoire in which each track inhabits its own very particular compositional space, Savor The Suffering resides in decidedly torturous and abrasive sonic territories. Fading out on a sample of a man apparently choking on his own vomit, it’s by far the most thoroughly unsettling and visceral offering on show here. With its gargantuan double-whammy of densely muscled bass and diaphragm-rupturing screams being overlaid by an airily whirling tsunami of scalpel-edged textural intricacies, every conceivable millisecond of this manically energised offering is gauged to achieve the utmost levels of unease and bewilderment in the unsuspecting listener. Especially given that, at the precise time of reviewing the aforementioned track, the humble scribe presently penning this review happened to be caught in the throes of a rather debilitating Bank Holiday hangover.
From here, Containment Breach, among others, revels in a CATTLE DECAPITATION-esque selection of unearthly screams together with the ghoulish, vocal cord-constricting semi-cleans for which the Californian heavyweights are globally admired. Melding in amongst a darkly swelling crescendo of choral vocals whose lush, velvet-rich harmonies abound with eerie beauty, Abhorrence contains no shortage of uniquely characterful idiosyncratic details, with werewolf-inspired number Lunar Psychopathy brimming over with beguiling, Blackwater Park-era fretwork.
Taking its title from that of the world-renowned ink blot psychologist of the same name, Rorschach is every bit the complex, multi-faceted beast you’d expect of a track written around the labyrinthine, frequently unfathomable territories of the human brain. In amongst brutally propulsive episodes of ceaselessly blasting, ABORTED-tinged carnage, the Americans waste no time in obliterating our faculties to virtual smithereens. The slick, dizzyingly stratospheric solo that pops up, wholly unannounced, midway admittedly feels a tad incongruous within this hitherto relentlessly brutalising mix, but this minor stylistic hiccup doesn’t detract too greatly from what is an otherwise solidly entertaining album. And while COGNITIVE’s core influences and sonic reference points may be quite audibly prominent at various moments within this frequently genre-straddling body of work, both the staggering levels of brutality and meticulously crafted, inventive riffery also being abundantly exhibited here far outweigh these more derivative moments.
Rating: 7/10
Abhorrence is out now via Metal Blade Records.
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