ANATOMY OF HABIT – Paired Sentinels

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7.5

Mark Solotroff is a cult figure in the experimental underworld of Chicago, with numerous predominantly noise and power electronics projects, as well as founder of the Bloodlust! label, which in the past produced historical names of the experimental scene such as Deathpile, Atrax Morgue, Slogun and Murder Corporation. Born in 2008, Anatomy Of Habit represents its closest side to the rock universe, while settling on coordinates that range from post punk to doom metal, passing through the many, many influences of American no wave, Swans in particular.

After four self-produced works, with the sole exception of the beautiful and claustrophobic “Ciphers + Axioms”, for which even Relapse Records went to the trouble, the five Americans return with “Paired Sentinels”, a chapter that seems to want to bring order to their music. Over the years, their sound has in fact evolved constantly, going from a debut that took the very first post rock (that of Slint, Tortoise and Bark Psychosis) and broke it down through the critical issues of New York noise rock, passing through the industrial doom of “Ciphers + Axioms”, up to the last two works, in which everything seems to find a more marked linearity, in the name of a constant and above average artistic quality.
“Paired Sentinels”, upon first listening, is immediately more accessible, structured and characterized by greater care for the arrangements than in the past, losing a hair that sense of controlled chaos that had made the other records true pearls of contamination between rock and abstract music. However, let's make things clear: this partial shift towards rock, a term to be taken with a grain of salt, is absolutely not a negative point, but rather a further demonstration of the band's ability to mature stylistically, recalling, in part, what the Swans did after “Children Of God”. And the name of Michael Gira's musical giant is not mentioned by chance, but rather as a reference to an influence that proves, especially today, fundamental for Solotroff and his associates.
Let's take a song like “Conditions For Freedom”, for example, in which all the elements that have characterized the Swans of the last fifteen years are synthesized in less than a quarter of an hour, embellished with those heavinesses taken from metal that have never been part of the DNA of the historic New York group and maintaining that great sensation of ecstatic catastrophe unchanged.

Where in previous productions the heart of the music was a structural freedom and a certain propensity for improvisation, in “Paired Sentinels” there is a sense of rigidity which has on its side the search for repetition as a writing method, holding the reins of the sparse moments in which it seems that everything must collapse at any moment: from this point of view, the tribal “The Importance Of Risk” is a perfect manifesto of this modus operandi.
But the prerogatives of this job are not just rigor and obsessiveness; even when it turns towards post-rock the bar remains high, as in the final “Paired Sentinels”, which transcends the very meaning of 'post' (i.e. going beyond): it deludes us with a languid crescendo followed by an explosion of distortions bordering on post-metal, and then collapses into a lynchiana of the most psychedelic Swans. An enigmatic and fascinating composition, suspended between research and confusion, as if one were constantly looking for something without being able to truly define its nature.
A separate discussion should be made for “Always Arriving”, the only moment of the album that partially detaches itself from the rest and sounds truly post-punk, as if Joy Division passed through the lesson of Neurosis, while remaining perfectly connected and organic to the rest. Organicity that also shines through in the wonderful work of Sanford Parker behind the mixer, who as always brings out the most visceral and tribal component in his productions.

A surprisingly structured work compared to the canons to which Anatomy Of Habit have accustomed us, but at the same time free from any stylistic rigidity: a sort of chaotic and structured order, in which the devastating fury of the previous records is replaced by an equally dangerous dramatic, disillusioned and apocalyptic tendency, specifically in the meaning that was given to the industrial folk of the Eighties and Nineties, that of Death In June and Current 93, so to speak.
A music that uses the various influences that compose it (metal, industrial music and noise rock) more on a semantic level than a purely structural one, difficult but fascinating as never before.