Abraded - Ethereal Emanations from Cthonic Caries

Sure, it rips, but where do we go from here?

Well, it sure was a tumultuous couple of years before Abraded’s “latest” work finally managed to see the light of day. Originally slated to come out some time in 2024 on an entirely different label, Ethereal Emanations from Cthonic Caries, was seemingly cancelled, and all traces of it removed off the internet, barring the occasional listing on websites such as the Metal Archives and RateYourMusic. It’s not up to me to figure out what went down that resulted in that, as what counts is that we do have “new” music to listen to from the Cleveland trio. 

I use quotations when referring to the music’s recency, as the material was for the most part recorded by Patric Pariano back in 2017, preceding the band’s first release, theDescendants of the Swamp demo. It’s something that is evident in the music itself, as it’s a far cry from 2023’s divisive Unadulterated Perversity, the sound being stripped back and eschewing any sort of experimentation. All 26 minutes of this record are direct, no-frills, deathgrind. There’s nary a lead to be heard on here, it’s manic riffage all the way through, and few things showcase that better than the explosive opener, “Ethereal Emanations”. Completely unrestrained in its delivery, it blasts the listener with rapid-fire D-beats and frantic tremolo riffing that  contorts itself into knuckle-dragging goodness, and all of this is done with a sense of flow that makes the whole thing feel as natural as breathing. It’s all textbook, but done in such a way that shows Abraded have both done their homework and studied the optional material.

Things shift around constantly, with an unrelenting sense of momentum, and by the time you manage to process what’s going on a track it might have blown by you altogether. Things can go from a dumbfuck pit groove to a warp-speed blast beat at the drop of a hat on songs like “Compensatory Contrarianism”, and it’s all held together by some surprisingly flashy and fill-happy drumming. It’s an album that rages around constantly and is built solely on riffs, primarily fast ones, with Pariano’s work behind the kit striking a perfect balance between tightness and giving the impression that it’s all going to fall apart at any  given moment. This is evident on tracks like “Theonemesis”, where the punkier passages find themselves trading places with more brooding tremolo riffing, whereas the mangled architecture of “Mass Formation Psychosis” is probably the album’s peak in terms of how nasty and disorienting things can get. It really just goes to show that a “simpler” sound doesn’t have to make for a boring album, and you can get a lot out of a little if you know how to play around with the tools you’re given.

This is evident in the (relatively speaking) longer tunes that crop up throughout the record, wherein the band decides to let things breathe a little more than usual, the death meal influence coming to the forefront. Admittedly, in the case of “Theodicy”, the closer, this means that we get the one tune that is for the majority of its runtime slow, its crawling tempos gradually increasing tension before we are hit with more frantic blasting, resulting in an appropriately explosive finale, unlike the one found on the sophomore’s “Noxious Fumes”. “Cthonic Caries”, our penultimate quasi-title track, is executed in a similar fashion, with crawling tremolo riffing and pounding chords slowly taking us towards the grand finale, although I’d be remiss not to mention the adrenaline boost that is the second half.

Even the record’s sonic aesthetics have undergone a makeover when compared to the ones found on Unadulterated Perversion. The mixing and mastering of this album eschew its “predecessor’s” cleanliness and melodicism, the bass’ decrepit crackle being far more prominent, engulfing the riffs during the album’s more crushing moments. Another notable change is the vocals, which stray further away from deathgrind’s established sewer gurgling and harsh shrieking, and veer towards a throaty howl that could be described as a more incoherent Chris Reifert. Once again, we are met with a very aggressive change in direction, at least when taking the band’s development thus far into consideration.

Which brings me to the crux of this review, the reason why I regularly used quotation marks when referring to the temporal conditions surrounding this album, and arguably what motivated me to write about Ethereal Emanations... to begin with. What is the point of this release? The band promoted it on social media as a “return to form” that leaves the melodic eclecticism of Unadulterated Perversity behind, but at the same time tries to emulate that record’s high-brow aesthetics/low-brow music dichotomy through its use of artwork and font. We don’t really have masses of gore to tie it back to the band’s beginnings, and it is made all the more jarring by the fact that this is *technically* the first thing Abraded ever made. While my reaction to the sophomore was decidedly mixed (check my review on that record for reference), I cannot help but be disappointed at the fact that Abraded’s third album is them buckling to the public and giving them what they want. For all its inconsistencies, <i>Unadulterated Perversity</i> was excellent at keeping me on my toes, each track holding at least one surprise, even if it was sometimes at the expense of my enjoyment. There is merit in that album’s existence as a wild swerve that took the fans in uncharted territory, and they simply didn’t capitalise on the precedent they set for themselves.

At the same time, it's all played completely straight, lacking any of the tongue-in-cheek qualities of the band’s earliest output. No samples from Adult Swim pilots to be found here. It’s just 26 minutes of brutality with no distractions. And sure, the riffs bang, but it all loops back to “Who’s this for?”. On a linear time-frame, this is them course-correcting and giving those who liked the debut and the demo more of what they want, at least in terms of compositions. But at the same time, despite its relative straightforwardness, there was a Dutch-angled weirdness to their earlier work, one that is notably missing from here. All that we’re left with now is deathgrind that lacks the fun factor that defined Abraded, at least when it comes to things beyond the songs themselves.

A more charitable interpretation of this record coming out would be that it was just dug up and given some polish for the sake of putting out something new after two years of silence. As we’ve already established, it did end up going through the ringer before it saw the light of day, changing labels and cover art (to be frank, I preferred the version that had Caravaggio’s “Judith Beheading Holofernes” on it), and considering its original 2024 release date, it was probably intended as a stopgap release before the band did something else. Nevertheless, its being promoted as an indication of where the band is going means that we ought to treat it as a sign of what’s to come in the future, rather than a fun little curio. 

Ultimately, I can’t rightfully tell you how I feel about Ethereal Emanations from Cthonic Caries. Do I fuck with the riffs? Heavily, that cannot be denied. Is this what I originally wanted to hear from Abraded before the sophomore came out? Absolutely. But we live in the timeline where the release order of the two was inverted, and now this album has to contend with the fact that it’s the band walking back on its previous work, which promised a wild and colourful take on deathgrind, one that despite my apprehensions with their first stab at it, I was curious to see how they’d further evolve from here. Would it be focusing on a specific experiment they tried their hand at, or would they just keep on going with the “too many cooks in the kitchen” approach? The possibilities were endless. Now though? It’s just deathgrind, well-put together at that, but one that I feel lacks what made this band truly interesting to keep an eye on. Not taking the metatextual aspects of it into consideration, this might actually be my favourite of the band’s work. But unfortunately, we can’t quite divorce the art from its surroundings, and the external material surrounding this particular piece shows an artist willing to compromise on what they want to do with their art, and for that reason I can’t help but be a little let down by it all. Make of that what you will. 

Highlights: Ethereal Emanations, Compensatory Contrarianism, Mass Formation Psychosis

Rating: 70%