RING THIS BROKEN BELL

"Deterior" is a Experimental / Post Metal project which has been around since 2007 and has released 6 full length albums during that time. The project is a one-person band where all of the instruments are played by founder Andrew Arnold from Columbus, Ohio. Andrew has cited "Godspeed You! Black Emperor" as one of his influences, and from the looks of the bleak album cover, you can see that immediately.

In February, 2019, Deterior released it's 6th full length studio album called "Ring This Broken Bell". The music is all instrumental on this album, after a decision that Andrew made after recording the EP "World" where he was quite dissatisfied with his vocals. Everything is played by Andrew on this album. There are 5 tracks lasting between 7 and 10 minutes each.

Starting out with the 10 minute behemoth of a song "I Woke Up and All of Us were Crying", there are crowd noises done with a field recording before the song builds and plays off of various guitar riffs, a moderately slow rhythm and heavy bass. The beat picks up fairly early on and churns out a heavy duet with the bass until the rhythm stops and the music becomes a bit atmospheric with softly howling guitars and an acoustic riff before it returns to heavier guitars again and builds back up quickly. The bass starts to churn heavily again as guitars push everything forward until a synth comes in for a short appearance. Just before 8 minutes, the loudness cuts off again, soft guitars swirl around and the crowd noise comes back in and flows into the next track.

"To Defy and Dissent" actually comes across a bit brighter at first with chiming guitars and nicely layered synths, it gets heavier for a short time, then moves to a more pensive atmosphere with soft percussion, soft guitar and lush keyboards. The track alternates back to a loud, almost "Pelican" style heaviness. A new rhythm suddenly changes to a faster beat which causes the track to intensify. After a while it returns to the previous heavy theme. The remainder of the album follows this same pattern with a lot of dynamic changes. The last track "A Hole Where the Sun Used to Be" is probably the highlight of the album and it stays soft and beautifully pensive for quite some time before it really opens up to a loud, yet emotional payoff.

These first two tracks serve as an example of the sound you will find on this album. The sound is more dynamic then you would think, sometimes with a thick, sludgy loudness in the style of "Pelican" like I said earlier, and at other times, more exploratory and brighter even touching on "Mogwai" styles. There are really no slow builds as you would normally expect with Post Rock music, but the overall sound is more of a Post Rock sound than a Post Metal sound. Yes it is quite heavy at times, but it never really stays there for very long. It leans more towards the post rock feel and never really ventures into experimental territory, but even in that style, it sounds less adventurous than say "GY!BE" and "Mono" and more like "Explosions in the Sky" or "Pelican". However, I notice a lot more dynamic and progressive changes in this music than your typical average post rock band, and that works to the benefit of this album in that it provides some variation in the music. It helps the music rise above the norm earning the album a 4 star rating.