Oksennus/Kolme toista

The album consists of a single 39-minute composition, broken into three 13-minute movements, seamlessly woven together, guiding the listener through a sprawling array of mercurial states of consciousness, calling to mind the complex compositions by fellow NWN! act Chaos Echoes. The album begins joltingly—a frenzy of ecstatic guitars, cycling and clashing, order and chaos held in restrained and tenuous equipoise. The drums and bass, active and aggressive, accentuate the commotion while providing musculature for the composition, as the vocals call out above the fray, invocations of dark intent. It is disorienting – a warped, whirling, death dervish hymn. As the first movement ends, the compositional filaments become increasingly unraveled, the elements broken down, splayed, ripe for examination. The second movement is more unified; almost hypnotic, but melodically complex. Notes contrast and collide, and although the passage is rhythmically consistent, the sequences of melody never quite repeat. The track slows to near stasis, like atoms as liquid freezes to solid. At the 26-minute mark, the track erupts into unbounded territory. Vocals spill over the mix, summoning and directing the music, which is increasingly freeform as the final movement gets under way. The vocals die out, and the drums dominate the track, with the guitars receding, forming a roiling undercurrent of distortion. Extraneous sounds produced by an array of sources, including a number of unusual instruments (piano, trumpet, accordion, harmonica, kantele) emerge to fill the space and lull the listener into a nearly transcendental state as the third movement winds down. Before the album ends, however, the blissful cacophony of the third movement is interrupted by the same frenetic force with which the album began. Indeed, the same drum pattern that opens “Kolme Toista” recurs to provide the foundation for the confounding mania of the final minute of the track before suddenly disintegrating into the welcome serenity of silence.