It’s one thing to be labeled “doom”, it’s another to get to the point where some of the citations in one’s liner notes come from notable cultural collapse writer Jared Diamond. This kind of obsessive purity in thematic form drives the Human Quena Orchestra on The Politics of the Irredeemable, less concept album than manifesto about the concluding grind down of civilization in general, finding a spot few had adequately reached since the conclusion of Skinny Puppy’s Last Rights. Instead of post-industrial collapse, the duo’s driving force remains a harsh metametal that touches on everything from the anguished howls of early black metal to the formless electronic extremities of acts like Skullflower. The slow, steady downward grind of ominous one-note riffs set against background drones, and the distant shrieks of Ryan Unks’ vocals delivering such lines as “Hope is a fallacy” aren’t actually as boundary-pushing as an initial listen might suggest — the Human Quena Orchestra deal in an extreme kind of formalism, but formal it is, a glowering rampage with very deliberate pacing. Thus, for instance, the musical pause between the two-part “Mores” and “Aspiration,” with the latter suddenly roaring to life in, appropriately enough, the first uplifting sonics on the album, however compromised and crushed by the arrangement, a nervous, barely leashed tension. Meanwhile, the concluding “Denial,” also a two-part effort, initially emphasizes quiet and distance over full skull-crushing, drum beats sounding like distant cannon-fire as a rhythmic wash of processed noise almost feels like a balm — at least until the second part concludes the album on a final melodramatic blast, structured and sorrowful. – Ned Raggett
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