photos by Christina Oddo
Italy’s ASSUMPTION returns with Paradox Of The Arrow, a new descent into the strange temporal architecture of death doom. Since their earliest recordings, the band has treated the genre less as a monolith set in stone than a space in which mass, duration and atmosphere can be manipulated. On Paradox Of The Arrow, that process advances further, stretching the apparent distance between one moment and the next until time itself dissipates into an altered abstraction.
ASSUMPTION’s immense low-end foundations remain, but the band’s heaviness is rarely a matter of density alone. Riffs unfurl geologically, like the convergent boundary to a subduction zone, before abruptly accelerating into passages of violent death metal, only to collapse again into long intervals of suspension, dissonant guitar resonance and spectral ambience. Guttural vocals emerge from deep within while drums alternately measure out enormous spaces and rupture them without warning. Melody appears in oblique fragments rather than conventional resolution, and psychedelic details flicker at the margins, where quiet stillness can feel as consequential as impact and the vibrations of beauty and dread dissolve into an amorphous shimmering light.
Taking its name from Zeno’s ancient paradox of motion – the proposition that an arrow in flight, observed at any single instant, is motionless – Paradox Of The Arrow finds an apt philosophical analogue for ASSUMPTION’s music. These six tracks from the depths draw the listener through successive states of movement and inertia, collapsing the notion of linear time. Across its prolonged passages and sudden eruptions, the album continually distorts the sense of scale and duration. By the time the arrow reaches its mark, the path behind it feels far less certain than when it began.
Fans of Disembowelment, Spectral Voice, Mortiferum, Mournful Congregation, Evoken, and Indesinence will not want to miss ASSUMPTION’s Paradox Of The Arrow. The album’s guitars and bass were tracked by the band in Italy and Slovenia. That material was reamped alongside the recording of the drums, vocals, and synth as well as mixing and mastering engineered and handled by Claudio Mulas. The cover art was painted by Mariya Popyk (Lugubrious Garment, Tomarum) and photographed by Marco Zanin, and the design/layout handled by Claudio Collina, including photography by Cristina Oddo.
The band states, “‘Tombs Upon The Sun’ was first meant to be the title of the new album before eventually setting for Zeno’s more apt ‘Paradox’ concept. This song is one of the most ‘accessible’ ones on an album that features our most varied material yet. Each song tells a story of its own. As for the lyrics to ‘Tombs…,’ they depict an imaginary, reverse oceanic world to which our spirit is set to return.”
Listen to ASSUMPTION’s engulfing “Tombs Upon The Sun,” now playing on YouTube HERE and Bandcamp HERE.
20 Buck Spin will release Paradox Of The Arrow on LP, CD, and digital formats on November 13th. Preorders can now be placed at the label webshop HERE and Bandcamp HERE.
Additional previews of this monolithic album will be issued ahead of the album’s release.
Paradox Of The Arrow Track Listing:
1. Paradox Of The Arrow
2. A Labyrinth In Ruin
3. Tombs Upon The Sun
4. Southwards Our Spirits Shall Forever Drift
5. Selenite
6. Vrykolakes
ASSUMPTION:
Giorgio Trombino – vocals, guitar, synths
Matija Dolinar – guitar
Claudio Troise – bass
David Lucido – drums
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