Epitaphe are streaming III in full ahead of its release on 11 September. The premiere is running at No Clean Singing.
The French trio's third album holds five tracks. Two of them, "Spring Frost" and the closer "Liminal", run past fourteen minutes each and take up most of the record. The first turns into the album's most dissonant and frenzied stretch; the second moves between restraint, desolate doom and sudden violence.
Saxophone plays a substantial part again, as it did on the band's earlier records, giving warmth to music otherwise built from abrasive riffing, dissonance and weight. Crushing passages give way to acoustic sections and atmospheric interludes, though the album does not settle into a simple alternation between loud and quiet. Ideas recur across the five tracks and hold the contrasting moods together.
III was recorded by James Leonard at Memoire Mecanique Studio and Pentachrome Wave Studio, mixed by Leonard and mastered by Greg Chandler at Priory Recording Studios. The cover is a painting called Spring Frost by the Finnish artist Petri Ala-Maunus, whose work also appeared on the band's two previous albums.
Aesthetic Death issue the album on CD and vinyl, with Gurgling Gore handling the cassette.
Source: Kronos Mortus News