It's been six years since the last Minsk record – 2009's With Echoes in the Movement of Stone. When that amount of time passes, it's natural to feel apprehensive about new material, especially when the lapse in output was due to an extended hiatus. But fear not, Minsk are still at the top of their game. The Crash & The Draw is a great return to form for the Illinois atmospheric sludge band.
In the six years that Minsk has been away, the field of great atmospheric sludge albums has become very crowded. Yob released Atma and Clearing the Path to Ascend, The Atlas Moth released An Ache for the Distance and The Old Believer, and Mouth of the Architect released Dawning. All of these albums are exceptional examples of the style. Clearing the Path to Ascend and An Ache for the Distance even managed to reinvigorate the flagging sub-genre and push the boundaries of the style into new and fresh directions. While its not as revolutionary as Clearing the Path to Ascend, The Crash and the Draw still deserves a place among these other paragons of atmospheric sludge.
While most of their contemporaries push sludge into a more psychedelic, experimental realm, Minsk have chosen to keep things heavy as a really heavy thing on The Crash & The Draw. There are still recognizable -post elements all over the album, but this is, first and foremost, heavy metal. The opening track, "To the Initiate," immediately dispels any doubt that the band had lost their step or mellowed in any way as the ambient keyboards that open the track are quickly swept aside in favor of a wall of pummeling guitars. There are a handful of gentler tracks to be found, such as "Onward Procession III: The Blue Hour" and "To You There Is No End," but even in its quiet moments, there's an undercurrent of simmering rage to The Crash & The Draw. The atmosphere is so oppressive, in fact, that even the post-rock elements sound forlorn rather than uplifting or pastoral.
As good as this album is, it's also much too long. With a running time of nearly 80 minutes, it's a feat to take the album in in one sitting. There's no obvious fat that can be trimmed to scale back the running time, though. The songs are all good, but the album is still too lengthy for its own good. The is a record that's best absorbed in one sitting, but who has the time to set aside nearly and hour and a half to sit and listen to an album? The easiest answer to the length issue would have been to cut out "Onward Procession" – a 23 minute long song that's been broken up into four movements. The only problem with this is it's also one of the strongest compositions on the record. Maybe Minsk would have been better served cutting it out and releasing it as an EP, but that's a pretty nit-picky criticism. When the worst problem with an album is that it's too full of good music, that's more of a selling point for fans than anything actually negative.
The Crash & The Draw is out now on Relapse Records.
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