Maximalism can take on many forms. It may materialize as a concrete ornate gothic church imposing over Prague’s main square under whose shadow humans move like ants in a hurried pace, swarming in and out of streets that flow like rivers into the Vltava. It can also be a hefty flock of crows, yawping with life, perched high upon a spire shrieking and calling before they make their cursory descent upon the heads of unsuspecting passerby’s, wings shimming tenfold in the cold sun of autumn.
Přílišnost (“Excess”), the sixth outing from Minnesota’s Kostnatění (Ossification), feels like this contraposed relationship of still and dynamic ever-expanding elements. The “low-brow”, as front man DL refers to, being the notes of childhood—Slipknot, slam death metal, Anaal Nathrakh - the concrete blocks of the construction; “high-brow”—alt-tuned progressive hypno-riffs that recall the swing and sway of Çimen İlter and Funda Arar. The work gesticulates towards a greater beyond, a battle with and against perfection as stated in a recent interview. The melodies and grooves climb high into some supposed heavens, past the steeples of skyscrapers, not dissimilar to the Sisyphean strive
”Not too long ago, when man was good / his gaze above his home drew him to the steeples / beacons upward, to God, / signalling “here, your hearts, for worship” “the tallest that man dared to build / until capital outgrew God / and efficiency became more important”
The palette on Přílišnost has expanded to soaring cleans, textural horror keys, beat raps, cinematic piano, ferocious jungle breaks and deep gutturals that accent a shift in the Kostnatění universe to a wider auditory palette beyond the Abigor-and-Usssy styled bends and bows of the microtonalism of folkloric music. The cosmic palaces built by DL have no masters, no grand rulers — they are presided over by indefatigable energy, consumed by the blasts of Joe Goldwater’s snare slinking between the flowing lines of the guitar.
There are seafaring musical moves as though sailing on an iron vessel between the clouds with flames pulling below. It is an uneasy ride yet fulfilling in its grandiosity and scope. An intoxicated Méliès whirling to the moon as directed by pane Karel Zeman from a future hallucination. As the ship passes the spires of Prague, the city is quiet again, a rumble present underneath, only the bells signaling a new dawn.
