Deorbit – Retrogradient
Deorbit – Retrogradient
Self-Released
Release Date: 10/11/23
Running Time: 40:32
Review by Dark Juan
Score: 8/10
You know that feeling you get when nothing is going right for you? When you try to do the simplest thing and it turns into a Herculean task? Welcome to Dark Juan’s world today. I didn’t get out of work until two hours after I was supposed to have finished and I have come home to Mrs Dark Juan being very unwell and curled up on the sofa under many blankies. She is not her usual cheery, generally murderous self and more importantly she isn’t creating any eldritch horrors, so she’s clearly feeling poorly. Normally she never stops constructing fabric-based evil. Even taking a package to the Post Office has proved to be what can only be described as a total pain in the gonads.
Fie! Fie to the world and the fact that it is making my life difficult today! May it have an infestation of crabs and no spare hands to scratch! May it have constant diarrhoea and a red raw sore ringpiece and only that horrible, medicated tracing paper that people of a certain age had to wipe their arses with in secondary school in the UK. If you were at high school in the 80s or 90s you will remember it vividly. And the fact you had to use half a roll to adequately polish the ringpiece because the paper was hard and slippery.
Nevertheless, having FINALLY completed the necessaries of today for adulting, I have now elected to coax the Platter Of Splatter™ into expansive life and have a listen to the debut album from Deorbit, an instrumental trio hailing from the city of Milwaukee, in the USA.
Insert Wayne’s World joke involving Alice Cooper and Pete Friesen here.
Anyway, this band plays instrumental Progressive Rock/ Metal and “Retrogradient” is supposed to be a trip through time and matter, evidenced by ‘Stratolith’, being a musical imagining of the expanse of the skies being replaced by boundaries of stone. Obvious physics and geological questions aside, the concept is an interesting one and each composition on the album has a concept behind it (it says here):
“Each track on “Retrogradient” is an artistic depiction of surreal aspects, aiming to merge the cold, expansive nature of the universe with the warmth of human understanding. Without the use of lyrics, Deorbit’s music tells a unique story within each composition, allowing listeners the freedom to interpret the profound concepts presented.”
Quite so. What Dark Juan in fact hears is a thunderous slab of Prog Doominess with emphasis on the terminally groovy. Having no vocalist, Deorbit have to really up the skill level of the instrument spanking to maintain the listener’s interest in the pieces they play. Happily, Deorbit are equal to this task and Dark Juan doesn’t have to be nasty to them. The opening track is also the title track and it has some absolutely delightful work going on behind the ultra-heavy beat and guitars – Jerry Hauppa frequently deploys other instruments (acoustic guitars, violins, HAMMERED FUCKING DULCIMERS – which are not a weapon normally in a Metal band’s arsenal. Indeed, Dark Juan has only just got used to the fact that the squawky sex horn can be employed in a non-sexual fashion) that sit just behind the main instruments and pry at the edges of the listener’s attention and sanity, eroding it gently away, abrading it so they only have cognition left for the almighty power of the Riff. Riffs, my friends, are something that Deorbit have a fucking surfeit of. To the point that they will deploy ten or more of them in a single piece of music, yet the tunes are not overloaded and there is no sense of preening at their own cleverness in the manner of, say, Tool. I’m perfectly sure that Deorbit could write palindromic albums if they chose, but they have instead employed grooviness as opposed to disappearing entirely up their own arses like Maynard James Keenan.
That’s not to say that the music isn’t remarkably complex. On ‘Deorbit’ for example, as well as being in at least three different, ever more complex time signatures, there are guitar and synth counterpoints that float in and out of the mix, like traversing gaseous nebulae. One moment it’s there and the next it has been replaced or disappeared. Dark Juan’s imagination has been at work again and it thinks that the song represents the increasing failure of an orbiting organic spacecraft and the fact that it has cognition of its impending demise as it can feel its orbit degrading and the increase of friction on its external skin as it heats as it hits atmosphere and the knowledge that it’s going to die out in a brief trail of flame and that it’s going to HURT because there isn’t any redundancy left in its systems…
The thing is the music becomes more interesting on this album when there are unusual flourishes and passages – the title track for example has some truly wonderful synth work beneath the crushing heaviness and there are times when guitars are overlaid, and different lines all intertwine, and the sum becomes much greater than its parts. There are times on the record however when I wish Deorbit would be MORE experimental. For instance, the gentle synthesized lines that float just below the surface of the main riff and music on ‘Perihelion’ are extremely good, not least because they are hidden behind a layer of heaviness that is quite spectacular to behold. ‘Terrakinetic’ also manages to effectively convey the feel of a particularly active and vigorous geology ripping apart and reforming a planet anew. So that’s a Very Good Thing then…
Time to sum up Deorbit then. This is an excellent debut album flawed only by being too note perfect and not experimental enough in the opinion of Dark Juan. The tunes are fucking massive and the concept a fun one to play with in the imagination. Clearly the guys can play, but the record seems somewhat… soulless. It’s almost as if it was all programmed. Which, to be fair, is a real compliment to the musicians because it shows their prowess and ability, but it doesn’t seem to have a quality pertaining to humanity in the performances.
The entirely arbitrary Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Deorbit 8/10 for what is a superb debut which is bursting with potential and great music, but needs a little fine-tuning to make it absolutely magic.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Retrogradient
02. Perihelion
03. Terrakinetic
04. Lunambulant
05. Glaciovore
06. Calderasure
07. Senescence
08. Stratolith
09. Deorbit
LINE-UP:
James Becker – Bass, cello
Jerry Hauppa – Guitar, hammered dulcimer, hurdy-gurdy, synth, violin
Antonio Ninham – Drums
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
