Review: Glassing ‘From the Other Side Of The Mirror’
The notion of liminal space is certainly a fitting metaphor for the disenfranchisement that rock music has tapped into as it has moved from the hopeful rebellion of its roots to the cultural critique of humanity’s increasing removal from the core of our nature.
This acknowledgement of internal strife and our place in the world has fuelled Glassing, the power trio from Austin, Texas, as they approached the creation of their fourth full-length album.
For nearly a decade, the band have carved a path that oscillates between the shimmering beauty of celestial shoegaze and the icy blasts of black metal filtered through a post-hardcore prism. Breaking ground in 2017 with their Light And Death debut, they established themselves as an act that can walk the high wire between moments of serene beauty and unfettered savage catharsis.
Their following full-length releases, 2019’s Spotted Horse and 2021’s Twin Dream increased the intensity as they sought to soundtrack their uncompromising and unsettling perspective with music that ‘set out to redefine the idea of heavy music to better reflect increasingly heavy times’.
2022’s two-track EP Dire Sulk saw drummer Scott Osment (Deaf Club, Planet B) join the party and now the band have returned to make their definitive statement to date. From The Other Side Of The Mirror features ten tracks of raw expression that freed them creatively to capture their fractured vision and articulate the pain reflected in singer/bassist Dustin Coffman’s despairing lyrics.
Kicking off with the high drama of Anything You Want, ringing guitar gives way to huge pounding drums and tortured screams that range from gravelly growls to bullish roars that grab your attention before sliding into an ethereal drift with soft whispering and chanting. The track sets the scene for an album full of tension that expertly manipulates the listener with build and release dynamics. As the breathless passages give way to majestic lead notes that spiral out from prime blackgaze into slamming post-metal, Glassing drifts effortlessly into the returning screams that see them go toe-to-toe with scene heavyweights like Alcest or Deafheaven for the seamless transitions from dark to light and back again.
On Nothing Touches You, Cory Brim teases indie guitar like prime John Squires, the light and airy sounds backed by luscious cymbal splashes from Osment whose performance on this album showcases why his recruitment was a next-level appointment from the band. When the track finally explodes, they keep it tempered with the softer refrains they deftly command. The momentum swings between this tender side and brutality, breaking down into hardcore screams and faltering rhythms that recall Will Haven, Coffman yelling almost acapella at times before they crash back in to build the climax.
Defacer is a snarling balancing act of violence that swings from beauty and savagery in the blink of an eye. The thunderous drumming and humming picking becomes a churning groove over which the lyrics are spat and hissed in a rabid fury and yet against this backdrop of searing aggression, spectacular moments of melody break through the dense, sludgy turmoil, like the sun breaking through the darkest of clouds.
The instrumental drone of Sallow calms after the face-melting ordeal the listener has just endured. This weird, pulsing electronic vibe does little to dispel the notion that this could all change in a blink of an eye, but it allows the listener to pause and gather themselves for follow-up Nominal Will.
against this backdrop of searing aggression, spectacular moments of melody break through the dense, sludgy turmoil, like the sun breaking through the darkest of clouds…
The fifth track on the album wastes little time getting back to the scything guitar and pummelling drums. The track morphs into another exercise in trading tender harmonies and feral screaming. The rich choral effects and clean jangling guitar return from earlier which sure must give the vocalist a chance to gather his energy before delivering more unhinged screaming like the end of the world has come.
Abruptly stopping before more ambient droning and feedback enter the fray, this makes a continual movement of the preceding track to set up Ritualist.
Slower and more sludge-based doom, Ritualist features multi-faceted vocal styles layered over each other, adding yet more dimensions and gives the track a Pallbearer-like sense of stately plodding. This combination of the heavy side of the band and the deft songwriting they exhibit are some of the best moments on The Other Side Of The Mirror even after they slowly turn the knife at the halfway point and start corrupting this lament with the rasping screams that darken the mood.
After this (comparatively) mellow run of tracks, As My Heart Rots, the shortest track on the album, gets back to the jackhammer drumming, complete with stop/start smashing, blurred riffing and some of the heaviest passages on the throughout the ten tracks in order not to let you forget that Glassing are a force to be reckoned with. The band spits and rages over this full-on assault, even when they pause the intensity to bring down the pace, it is full of tension heading for the blistering ending.
Circle Down brings down the battering to intrude their more musical side, but this is a swerve as the majestic power once again glides into black metal snarling and growling. Rather than retread what they have done before, the band swings in a hypnotic groove between classical guitar and smashing rhythms that keep those intricate notes bubbling under the surface. At the halfway mark, they add a death metal-style stomp and bellow then flip back to the choral lilt, finishing on a crackling collapse.
The ambient atmospherics of The Kestrel Goes is a tender piece of shoegaze that offers hope and beauty in the raging storm before Wake breaks out of the tranquillity with heroic guitar work that almost takes you out of the cacophony that has gone before until the vocals once more bark and rage.
Despite this, the album ends feeling triumphant making the forty-two-minute journey a powerful, emotional rollercoaster. Glassing have easily delivered a career-best here.
Label: Pelagic Records
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Scribed by: Mark Hunt-Bryden
