Certain emotional responses cannot be tapped into voluntarily, it takes harsh life events thrust upon you to overwhelm you with emotions never felt before. A place to channel becomes a critical crutch for you make sense of it all. Through the painful loss felt by Still guitarist Fraser Biggs during the loss of his father A Theft was created and its harrowing nature is an unforgettable experience.
All consuming in its bleakness, A Theft is a haunted black and white painting with horror writhing beneath its surface. Desperately clawing at the speckles of light which flash from gazing eyes creating a hugely unsettling and unforgiving atmosphere. It begins with whirring drone to leave you on edge before it attacks with blistering force. The first immediate onslaught comes in ‘Only Time Will Tell’ where The guitars are panic stricken and the cymbals rattle with ferocity, leaving the vocals to desperately glide over the top like an unforgiven spirit. It would be easy and lazy to put Still in just the post-black metal category, swathes of extreme and too often there is a celebration of avant-garde arrangement throughout the album for them to categorised as solely one form of metal. Bands like Ulcerate and Plebeian Grandstand have clear influence here in the world of the weird and wonderful heavy music. The creation of A Theft‘s brand of heaviness is one similar to the likes of Amenra where the tension is built from more than just the core instruments, emotion and suspense are crucial storytellers leaving imaginations riddled with anxiety. The minute long pseudo interlude ‘Oscillate’ is a brief but crucial chapter with its unsettling drone from the cello gives way to a crushing bellowing howl and galloping blast beats to give a sense of unpredictability in the albums emotion and arrangement.
The back section of the album exudes sludgy undertones burrowing deep into this biome of this album. Creating a harsh and grim landscape especially through the back half of ‘Life Eclipses Livings’ misery. Returning to be Produced and mixed by one of the UK’s crown jewel producers in Joe Clayton (Pijn, Wallowing, Mastiff) and bringing them into his home of left field heaviness as the first signing to his Floodlit Recordings. He sits extremely close to the construction of the material to give extra layers of understanding to the bands vision. The mix menaces and suffocates in equal measures as drummer and vocalist Jack Green takes centre stage as the main artery carrying any remaining signs of life with biting blast-beats taken from the rawest days of black metal. Ending on album highlight ‘Unresolved’ helps to give such a poignant subject the ability to escalate to its most desperate as the guitars climb with dread. Bolting out of the gate before halting with anguished howl and into a build which tendrils into those final death throes resulting in bitter acceptance. The album ends with the unsettling whirring of being no closer to closure but perhaps there a those few uncertain fibres of hope.
As a band who’ve shared stages with many across the post and metal spectrums they will continue to grow in the darkest corners priming themselves deservedly for the UK stages of Damnation Festival, Fortress Festival but also the audiences of Roadburn would marvel at how unrelenting A Theft is. We have an avant garde gem waiting to be unearthed in Still and it won’t stay buried for long.