Album Details

• Artist: Pelican
• Album: Ataraxia Taraxis
• Label: Southern Lord
• Year of Release: 2012
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2012-04-09

Chicago-based instrumental rockers return with four songs that give them ample room to root out the sonic gold in the hidden tunnels of their own creation. "Ataraxia Taraxis" may be a mixed bag, but only at the end. For the most part this is as devastating and fearless as any of their releases.

"Ataraxia" buzzes with an industrial-heard-through-radio-static foundation, overlaid with a somber acoustic guitar as melancholy as any blues chart, and is quickly followed by the hectic "Lathe Biosas," as good as metal-based instrumental gets: crunchy, expansive, massive and dripping with raw melodic power. "Parasite Colony is no less powerful, but is adds more sludge and an atmospheric mid-section that would be ponderous but for the
perfectly inserted guitar lines.

The finale, and second part of the title, "Taraxis," is a mixed bag of acoustic, ambient, thrash and an uncomfortable mix at that. Pelican manage to wrap it up with grace, but only because they are Pelican, and have an intuitive sense of how to lock in when they need to. This isn't so much a misstep as an overreach, one they satisfactorily rectify within the confines of the track.

There is a lot to chew on for a four song EP. . "Ataraxia Taraxis" finds Pelican remaining serious in their duties as sonic astronauts swimming around in potentials of volume and how it resonates with the inner space of heart and mind. Not a bad way to kill forty minutes.

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