E-L-R have released Atropa, their third album, through Prophecy Productions, and the whole of it is up as a stream.
Six songs, and the duo are unusually direct about where they came from. S.M., who plays guitar and sings, puts it plainly: they shaped the record during a period of profound transformation and illness, working on survival, endurance and change that cannot be undone. I.R. plays bass and sings alongside him. That is the entire band.
The music sits where it has always sat, between doomgaze and post metal, and the two of them resist both labels. What they do is hypnotic repetition stretched over long arrangements, with passages that turn abrasive rather than resolve, and the record moves between crushing weight and something close to weightlessness without ever settling in either.
The title carries its own warning. Atropa is the botanical genus that holds deadly nightshade, belladonna, a plant that has been medicine and poison depending on the dose. For a record about grief, delirium, obsessive love and endurance, it is the right name, and the band chose it knowing exactly that.