3 out of 5

Label: Dunk!Records, Thousand Arms

Produced by: Andres Algaba

I was discussing with someone: are our tastes, like those of our fun-squashing parents, determined by What We Heard First? Like, when I will say that I prefer band A and band B doesn’t add to their sound that much, am I actually making some type of legitimate observation, or just being limited by my old-timey ears, unable to hear whatever nuance band B is bringing? Because Pelican was the first band I heard to really nail the heavy, instrumental, post-rock I sought, and because Russian Circles popped up to prominence soon after, will I forever hear instrumental post-rock in terms of comparison?

Astodan, like a good handful of Dunk! / Thousand Arms bands, is a slowcore, moody, instrumental outfit, doing the glittery guitars to distortion breakout thing, with a slow and steady beat pounding along. Overly dismissively, I will say that I have a lot of trouble telling many of the bands in this vein apart, but Astodan does favor a generally heavier guitar sound that I dig, and the production is a lot richer – many of these groups (to my ears) prefer a “flattened” sound that cuts off the edges, and Bathala legitimately rocks at points.

But: I still can’t get over just hearing remnants of other bands, and Astodan doesn’t step off of that beaten (slowly, loudly) path often enough to really excite me. This leans more into the “pretty” heavy world of post-rock – something that I trace back to Mogwai and that Red Sparowes eventually typified – in which clean, paced guitar strums eventually give way to distorted ones, with the drums pounding a’louder, and no solos or freakouts in sight – slow and steady is the job. Add in some programmed drums to kick off a track, and some occasional contrapuntal guitar lines all pretty atop the distortion, and you’re set. Bathala is almost stricter in this structure than other bands – there’s very little wiggle on these tracks – but the aforementioned heft of the sound helps counter some of that tedium; when the guitars kick in, they kick in, and the production maintains a room-filling sound throughout.

There are two tracks on the disc that are suggestive of some more unique directions for the group to explore: while Buaya’s first half sounds like Russian Circles to a T, it transitions to a post-grunge thing in its back half that’s pretty exciting; and followup Alay has the aforementioned digital drums up front, which kinda made me roll eyes – it’s kind of a tired way to add another dimension to your guitar / bass / drums setup – but as the song proceeds, we get some layering with various other types of percussion that sounds cool. So both of these songs are imperfect, but give Astodon a bit of their own flavor.

Which is what’s missing here, as Bathala is surely a solid album in this genre, just lacking anything really defining that makes me not move it into a pile with all the other bands doing similar things.

Note: the LP edition has an additional track over CD and digital – it’s an untitled, atmospheric piano bit that repeats some of the musical themes from the album; truly something of a coda. An appreciated bonus for physical edition buyers, though I guess kind of a bummer that it’s not on the CD.