Can I say fresh off the boat for a new release? Do releases come off a boat? No matter the answer, Switzerland’s Mycelia has just released In A Late Country on Eclipse Records.
What I dig about Mycelia is that they keep me on my toes. I never know what I am going to hear so I have to be ready to pivot as their sound does.
One cannot listen to In a Late Country and think they’re going to get a straight up hardcore, metal, or electronic album, but if one thinks, I would like all of that sound in one album and more, then Mycelia is giving you just that.
But I suppose that’s the best part of djent metal. It’s a smorgasbord of everything.
Mycelia is that smorgasbord of everything and their sound is actually very hard to describe without sounding like I am just spewing adjectives into the air. They’re heavy, melodic, catchy but also all over the place, chaotic, and baffling. Let me not forget to add that the vocals can be guttural to operatic and that the music can be bombastic to crushing to groovy.
Mycelia makes my head spin, in a good way. That is a sincere compliment.
In a Late Country satisfies every craving I didn’t know I needed from multiple genres of music.
I dig the metal screams in “Towards the Melting Library” and the electronic 80’s vibe of “A Rude Visitation” while “Cryostatic Clubbing” and “Cryostatic Clubbing Part 2” are the progressive heavy rock opera I didn’t know I wanted. My heavier metal loving side loves the brutality of “The Librarian and the Flock of Birds” “Conversing with Terrorists”, and “Two Numbers”.
But I think “An Appointment at the Doctors” could possibly sum up the sound of Mycelia in one song. It has everything. It’s chaotic beauty and it had me at the bass. Everything else was an absolute bonus.
FAVOURITE TRACK: “A Rude Visitation”
MUST LISTEN TRACKS: “An Appointment at the Doctors”
Listen to In a Late Country or watch “The Beginning of a Long Hangover”, “Towards the Melting Library / The Librarian and the Flock of Birds”, or “In a Gas Station at the Outskirts of the Meth Desert” below
