Album Review: Still – A Theft (Floodlit Recordings)

Uncompromising and feral post-black metal trio Still present their long-awaited sophomore album ‘A Theft’ through emerging new UK label Floodlit Recordings. It will be released on November 15th, 2024.

The personification of anxiety in aural form, Still’s new album is every bit the discordiant and discombobulating experience long-term listeners would hope it to be. Whereas new listeners need to be warned that what this album offers can be best summed up as a heavy wave of noise that crashes over the mind, body, and soul. Noise that draws from various genres like sludge, death, doom, and black, and smashes it all together into an intoxicating gloom-infused post-style listen.

Thick and dense, with near drone aspects to its sound, Yearn starts the album off in uncompromising style. Still clearly wanted to start the album off with harshness at the forefront, and this track is that… and so much more.

Layers upon layers of intangible ideas made tangible through the sheer talent of a band focusing on the spaces between horror and brutality. Where some semblance of beauty can be found provided the listener is willing to sink to their depths. Yet when a tracks like Only Time Will Tell and Light come along with such wild fury, it’s impossible to not wallow with Still.

It’s not only that those tracks, and the album as a whole, is feral and furious but because the turbulent approach is so dissonant. A word that can often be used in a more negative way, but here, is used to positively highlight the unbelievable approach that Still has to music. Where, on the one hand it can be wholly cavernous, but on the other, it wraps around the mind like a death shroud. The experience is like nothing else, and try as you might, it will make the heart beat that much faster.

The feeling this creates comes from primordial fear and there is no better showcase of that on this album than Dark. The middle part of the album and a track to make you wonder just what lurks on the periphery of sight.

Seemingly offering a moment of uneasy peace at first, Still transform the short Oscillate into one of the album’s most intense listens. Before offering up the challenging horror-laden entity that Life Eclipses Living and the fearful Small Mercies of Falling Apart. The former has such a dark and dangerous approach with every aspect of the band howling in uncomfortable fashion on a lengthy trawl into the madness of their minds. Whereas the latter can be simply summed up as the sound of bleak viciousness.

It’s no surprise that the mental toll this album takes reaches it apex with the finale of Unresolved either. Even though it’s interesting to hear sharper post elements layered in and around the manic speed and ferocity of Still’s blackened side. It’s also interesting to hear this track slow down and scale things back as it goes on. Leading to an ending that is so tense, it’s liable to give you heart palpitations.

Thanks for that, Still, even though it’s totally worth it. All the anguish is. Still have delivered a masterclass in listenable dissonance.

Still – A Theft Track Listing:

1. Yearn
2. Only Time Will Tell
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Oscillate
6. Life Eclipses Living
7. Small Mercies of Falling Apart
8. Unresolved

Links

LinkTree | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Floodlit Recordings