#system i

A couple songs on System I provide especially effective renditions of those pressures, enacted in the ways the band bends, distends and distorts its sounds. “Dimension Witness” and “In Perpendicular Planes” in particular feature some inspired, weirding guitar acrobatics. The gnarled, slicing tone Stroda demands from his instrument might prompt comparisons to French players Vindsval and Hasjarl (too bad he so blithely fucks with fascists). In sonic terms, the comparisons are apt. But Stroda and his bandmates in Decoherence — Prior, who manipulates numerous electronics, and vocalist Tahazu — have little interest in black metal’s too frequent and often too silly Satanic theatrics. The band’s music recognizes itself as a physical event, an acoustic signal that has real, tangible properties. In response, there’s some complex stuff happening in our ears, tiny bones vibrating and colliding, prompting electrical impulses to zip around our nervous systems. Decoherence’s songs are tuned into the mechanics of those wondrous phenomena, and the outsized experiences they can facilitate. 

Given the band’s extensive interests in explosive clangor and whirring, fizzing heat, it’s sort of surprising how often they uncover melodic experiences that verge on the pleasurable. That quality dominates in the collection’s most unexpected tune, a terrific cover of Killing Joke’s “The Wait.” There’s been lots of chatter retrospectively claiming Killing Joke as an “industrial metal” band, a label that would have likely confounded Jaz Coleman and the boys back in 1980. The song has been covered before (meh, snooze), but Decoherence’s version just about makes sense of all the chatter. Prior’s synth tones bristle with icy thrills, and the muscle in Stroda’s playing makes you wish for more of those sorts of riffs from him. But Decoherence has its own vision. The band’s unwavering focus on perfecting that vision may limit the range of its output, but it's still quite thrilling to listen to them chase it.