'Rape'. That's the title of the opening track of From All Purity, the 5th full-length from Chicago's Indian. It's immediately clear from the maelstrom of bludgeoning noise that escapes the speakers within the opening minute that this will be a listening experience that is as deeply unpleasant as that crass choice of title. Harrowing howls, squalls of feedback and abrasive riffs all ensure that you're never comfortable for a single second, and even in the less outright confrontational passages the intensity never dims one iota.
They follow much the same template on 'The Impetus Bleeds', with more painful feedback and thunderous percussion backing some genuinely disturbing vocal interplay between guitar/vocal duty-sharing duo Dylan O'Toole and Will Lindsay. It may not exactly be anthemic, catchy, or even listenable in a conventional sense, but it's the highlight of the whole album for me. Unfortunately that's because things go steeply downhill from here...
For a song called 'Directional', this track never seems to actually go anywhere; there's a distinct lack of recognisable riffs, and the plodding pace make this a pretty uninspiring trudge through 6 minutes of drudgery. Following track 'Rhetoric Of No' is a model of dynamism in comparison, the ferocious vocals and staccato bursts of distortion immediately going for the jugular. The track's dalliances in ear-piercing noise effects do enough to unsettle the listener, but it never quite distracts from the lack of interesting rhythm. I mean it does have a rhythm, but you'll be falling asleep mid-headbang, it's so bland and uninspired.
'Clarify' begins with screes of feedback and drones, the textures interesting in themselves, but it goes on a little too long to really qualify as merely an intro, and just gets annoying after a while when you realise that this is what the whole track consists of. The rotten ranting of the heavily-distorted vocals recalls similar recent releases from Gnaw and Culted, who in all honesty do the noise-inflected blackened doom thing far more effectively and interestingly.
Ultimate track 'Disambiguation' is a return to structure, and even features some excellent subtly melodic guitar work, but it still feels too tightly constricted. Instead of revelling in the foreboding atmosphere that all the best doom is shrouded in, Indian just sound weighted down by it; turgid, sluggish, and worst of all bored. I don't know if it's the performances captured here, or something else that I can't quite pin down, but even after several spins I still find the majority of the album to be lacklustre.
I really wanted to like From All Purity. On paper it sounds like it could've been my new favourite album, and I'm genuinely disappointed that it's not. Whilst I am a fan of all the various genres they incorporate into their sound, Indian don't seem to have any idea where they want to take their unsettling racket, and despite technically ticking all the right boxes, it just feels lacking somehow.
