Decoherence "Unitarity" Review
“Theoretical physics? In my black metal?” It’s more likely than you think.
Black metal as a genre is no stranger to lyrical themes of space and darkness. But the malevolent entities that form Decoherence are bringing a new dimension (pardon the pun) to these themes by focusing their attention on an oft-overlooked facet of the cosmos and our relationship with them: quantum mechanics. Just take the band name to start: quantum decoherence is, as one would expect, “the loss of quantum coherence” 1; essentially it takes place any time a particle in a quantum system does not adhere to the general wave function that is expected of such particles. Have I lost you yet? Buckle up, because it only gets heavier from here...
I’m going to promise right now to make a good-faith attempt not to break down the minutiae of every single fancy-shmancy science word these guys throw around (mainly because I don’t understand a large majority of them, as I’m not a theoretical physicist by trade), but that gets a little difficult when it seems to be their bread and butter. The trio released their first full length last year, Ekpyrosis, which of course upon listening led me immediately down the rabbit hole of attempting to find the origin of the title, and boy they did not disappoint with its meaning. For the uninitiated Ekpyrosis was, to the Ancient Greek Stoics, a large destructive fire which engulfed the universe to cleanse it and begin anew. It was believed (and still believed, by modern-day Stoics) to be a cyclical process, renewing our universe time and again over a scale of hundreds of millions of lifetimes of us humans who would dare to think in such broad strokes of time and space.
To that end, Ekpyrosis is, for lack of any other word other than the same word that is used to describe most space-themed atmospheric black metal projects: massive. But to their credit, Decoherence have managed to engineer their sound in a way that sounds truly divergent from such heavily trodden paths as those of our familiar friend Darkspace (or Paysage d’Hiver, however you may know him). You may think of other projects as having a fairly natural sound, recorded in a room, reverb added either by pedal, amp, or otherwise post-processed. But for Decoherence, this simply is not enough; the guitars on the album sounded like they were recorded live standing directly adjacent to a black hole, with chords reverberating endlessly into darkness as the room is violently ripped apart by the gravitational pull. The trio delivered nearly 45 minutes of world-ending mountains of guitar tone, helplessly depressive vocals, and to top it all off, additional industrial noise that only reinforces the sheer scale of the cosmic machine the listener is witnessing tear apart the very fabric of reality some billions of light years away from where they sit. Needless to say, I was excited to hear more.
What members Stroda (instrumentation), Tahazu (vocals), and Prior (electronics) have laid to record here on Unitarity is nothing short of impressive. Similarly to their last release, the first track starts off extremely suddenly, as if the listener is dropped right in the middle of some far-off planet just in time to hear thousands of miles of its surface suddenly erode away into the vacuum of space. There is no time to get your bearings; you’re left trying to get a hold on the song’s structure mere seconds in, as guitars screech with absolute dissonance against a hail of blast beats and haunting vocals. All the instrumentation here just continually resonates, echoing infinitely as a radio wave would across the vast emptiness of the universe for hundreds of thousands of years. As the first track ends, we are greeted with some feedback which undulates with a menacing air, only solidifying further the extremely atmospheric aesthetic of the band. The second track ventures more into traditional black metal territory in terms of composition, but it leaves nothing to be desired. While Tahazu wails away, one could almost feel the existential crisis coming on as the tone reaches a magnificent peak, as if barely-comprehensible shapes were forming in front of you as an alien race arrives through a celestial gate from a far-away world. The impact is nothing short of breathtaking. This trio has given the listener the keys to a new dimension, just waiting for them to open the door. “Metastable Phase Transition” opens with a calming industrial soundscape before some semblance of rhythm forms with a cleanly picked guitar melody and bass humming along behind it, as the drums slowly march. This resting point in the album evokes imagery of being aboard a space station observing a dying star, complete with the ever-present idea of the star’s supernova obliterating every passenger at any time. The dissonance slowly creeps in as we return to the real black metal meat-and-potatoes of the project, but what’s interesting here is that quickly gives way again to some more gentle passages. I’m not sure whether or not it’s the bass here or some post-production that lends an almost baritone choir-like sound to the background, but the effect is chilling. “Torsion Formed” immediately begins with some brutal blast beats (seriously, Stroda’s arms must be killing them after a recording session) and very angular guitar lines. That’s about the best descriptor one could possibly give the guitar tone on a Decoherence record, as they prove to lend a profoundly obtuse air to the proceedings, even in sections of rapid-fire tremolo picking. I hear bits of Obscura-era Gorguts in some tracks like this one, mostly just in the leads, but proving not to be quite as “out-there” in composition. “Remnants” is definitely a stand-out track, beginning with a desolate synth pad melody over some droning instrumentation before quickly churning out one of the most energy-charged sections I’ve heard from them. About a third of the way through, the guitar gives way to a bass melody that immediately reminded me a bit of Ed Harrison’s Neotokyo soundtrack but executed so much more ominously. These guys certainly know when to attack and when to show restraint, and the composition here is about as good of an example as you can get. The track ebbs and flows, giving the listener room to breathe before throwing them back into the auditory gravity well and pulling them back out again. One can tell there is care put into their craft, as nothing ever seems out of place, and the record is truly immersive and transportive as a result.
The final track, “Unitarity Violation” slowly marches the listener to certain doom by way of a repeated guitar phrase about halfway through that I can only describe as a “death knell” of sorts, before slowly extending out the observation deck to the tune of a pounding drum pattern and collapsing into an astronomical firestorm. But allow me to break down this track title, which contains the word that the album is named for. You see, unitarity, from what I can understand, is a concept in theoretical physics (specifically relating to quantum mechanics) that allows for physicists to lay down a set of “ground rules”, per se, that govern the expected behavior of a quantum system (or particle) over time, basically equating to all probabilities of the system adding to 1 (in other words, 100%). Quantum mechanics has such a strong relationship to time and our understanding of it that any quantum theory needs to hold true to unitarity, lest it be rendered unprovable or unobservable given our current knowledge of how the universe works. So we can guess that a unitarity violator is, in layman’s terms, a system which we have no explanation for with quantum theory (and, likely by extension, any other established scientific theory). It seems like the members of Decoherence have found one of these systems and want to relay their observations to us. So, what are you waiting for?
Unitarity is not available
through any scientific journal subscriptions but is available at the
Decoherence Bandcamp.
Artwork by Prior of Decoherence
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