The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

Hailing from Chicago, The Atlas Moth have been, more or less quietly, forging themselves a little growing peninsula off the sludge metal mainland since 2007, with their sophomore effort, An Ache for the Distance, making a noticeable change in trajectory from their vaguely blackly post-metal and mostly unexciting debut, creating the embryonic stages of their sound to come. Their following effort in 2014, The Old Believer, found the band playing with the balance of musical ingredients that comprise their sound, a bit of a fruitless experimentation in the short term. But for a band undergoing such a methodical process to hone their sound, there really is no such thing as fruitless experimentation, and the resulting product this year, Coma Noir, proves it as The Atlas Moth’s most accomplished album yet.

In the three-and-a-half years since The Old Believer, The Atlas Moth have both significantly improved their production and their compositional instincts, and found the right balance of all the familiar components of their unique sound. The yin of low-timbre bellowing clean vocals to the yang of gruff black metal screams is more smoothly interwoven on the songs on Coma Noir, and the thick, engulfing sludge that provides the accents to the band’s atmospheric doomy dirge is placed more neatly in grooves here where before it was more haphazardly scattered. Indeed, this album finds The Atlas Moth groovier, catchier, and more ethereal all at the same time to make for their most consistently captivating release yet.

The title track opens the album with an immediate envelopment of low-tuned, mid-tempo sludge that teeters between head-crushing and gut-wrenching, with a palm-muted groove that finishes the latter half of the song that is just purely infectious. The bleak premonitions of the title of the second track, “The Last Transmission from the Late, Great Planet Earth” are realized by the gritty black metal shrieks that string the sections of the song together. It’s the uniqueness of the following track, though, that I feel elevates the album the most. My favorite song on the album, “Galactic Brain”, contains the album’s neatest andante grooves and its most cathartic blend of gruff bass/baritone clean vocals and harsh black metal screams.

The album’s longest track, “The Streets of Bombay”, takes the more overtly atmospheric angle to their post-metal sound, dragging just a bit, however, while saving the potent guitar crunching for its successor, “Actual Human Blood”. “Smiling Knife” is without a doubt the album’s most angry, psychotic song with a creepy plinking high-note palm-mute intro that divulges into some of the most venomous black metal screaming on the album.

“Furious Gold” takes it mid-tempo/slow and dense again with more head-beating riffage laced throughout. “The Frozen Crown” picks up the tempo a bit and delivers probably the catchiest throaty clean vocal refrain on the album amid tasty licks and chunky riffing. “Chloroform” wraps the album up in a warm, atmospheric swirl of doomy post-metal sludge with a sufficient sense of conclusiveness amid the haunting bass-y clean vocals and strangled black metal screams that unfortunately ends just a little too abruptly leaving the album feeling truncated.

To provide one bit of criticism, I’ll say the album does unload almost all its novelty in its first third, but it does at least back up the rest of its runtime with quality production and a well-cultivated mood.

For the most part, though, Coma Noir is the sign of The Atlas Moth finally finding their sweet spot and hitting their stride with their most improved work on all fronts. It is definitely my favorite release from the band so far and one of my favorite releases of the year.