LLNN - "Unmaker"

Genre : Post-metal

Released : September 24th, 2021

Label : Pelagic Records

FFO : Cult of Luna, Herod, Primitive Man

LLNN is a name I had been seeing float around for the past couple years due to them being part of the Pelagic Records roster of bands and their inclusion on the line-ups for festivals such as Roadburn and ArcTanGent.

And yet, it is only very recently, after hearing the overwhelmingly positive feedback concerning the new album that I became acquainted with their music.

Crushing, bleak, oppressive and atmospheric; "Unmaker" has everything you could expect to hear from a sludgy post-metal album.

Yet the guitar and bass tones on this thing definitely makes it feel way heavier than your average post-metal.

Some of the tones here feel like they could belong to the chuggier side of mathcore (think Frontierer's "Molten Larva" but with the atmosphere of post-metal) or even funeral doom.

Add to that the heavily manipulated field recordings of blacksmithing machinery the band has captured and incorporated into their music, and you've got yourself an incredibly austere and unforgiving sound that could easily pass itself as being the soundtrack to the world's undoing.

In pure post-metal fashion, the vocals convey that sense of gravitas and rattled despair, yelling in unison with the crushing grandeur birthed by the instrumentals and into the wide expanse of existential void, in a way that pleasantly recalls Cult of Luna's own approach to vocals.

LLNN's "Unmaker" very easily joins the heaviest-sounding releases of this year due to its earth-shattering sound design and gritty atmosphere.

I would definitely encourage anyone who has yet to listen to them to not wait around to do so as much as I did!