Speaking of bands that have successfully weathered a decade-plus long year absence, we find Austere back with their fifth full-length The Stillness of Dissolution releasing this very day.  It’s not their triumphant re-entry onto the scene though; rather, this release officially means they have more albums post-hiatus than they did before they took a thirteen year break, but that doesn’t mean the Australian duo is resting on their laurels.  They are out here to prove that they will always have a place in the black metal landscape, and in true fashion that means doing things that are going to make the purists angry.

Although, Austere (not to be confused with the American DSBM band of the same name) have made a concerted effort to let The Stillness of Dissolution be blacker and more depressive than their more recent outputs, so that in fact brings them a little closer to their original Norse and old-school black metal roots.  As always, Austere is Mitchell Keepin (“Desolate”) on guitars, bass, and keyboards, as well as sharing vocal duties with drummer and also keyboardist Tim Yatras (“Sorrow”).  While The Stillness of Dissolution harkens back to the early days of the band, it does so while still maintaining the maturity, growth and modernity injected into the project since their 2007 debut Withering Illusions and Desolation.  The themes explored on this album are keeping in line with their depressive nature: the abyss of time, the inevitable decay of order into chaos, and the cyclical nature of life and death.  The way those themes are explored, though, is in a surprisingly melodic and downright catchy way that incorporates a lot of anthemic hooks, melodies and a touch of melodeath and almost power metal riffs that caught me completely by surprise the first time I put this record on.  It straight up rocks in a lot of places, much more so than your average black metal album.

A lovely case in point is the opening track “Dissolved Exile”, which reeks of folky, melodic death metal so hard I can smell Suidakra coming off it from a mile away.  It sure makes for a hell of an opening salvo, and from there the fires just keep burning.  Lead single “Time Awry” features a tapped lick so catchy it’ll be impossible to get out of your head for a solid week while reintroducing some of the more forlorn atmosphere that would be expected of Austere.  Further on down the album, we see Desolate and Sorrow really lean into the more romantic side of their depressive music, with “Redolent Foulness” and “The Downfall” extensively featuring heartfelt clean singing while the guitars ground the tracks in somber washes of lush chords.  The musical performance is solid all around; I don’t think Austere are a band that are known above all for their technical ability, but they seem to be showing off here a little more than they normally do, which is a nice musical change of pace for them.  Yatras especially provides a rock-solid foundation for the six cuts that make up The Stillness, pulling out the stops when needed but more often than not laying in and getting a really solid groove going.  The final track, “Storm Within My Heart”, may be the most overtly black metal the band gets here, with tremolo-picked lead lines and monster blast beats under classic shrieked vocals.  There must be something in the water in Australia, because this reminds me a lot of Woods of Desolation (or maybe it’s the stint in Woods that Yatras did that led to this), but with a distinct flair that effectively combines Austere’s past and present.

You could say that Austere have come back with a vengeance now, although that comeback is rapidly becoming a part of the past, while Austere’s present looks to be here to stay.  Austere even managed to play live for the first time ever in 2022, so it looks like that break really did lead to some of the best things for the duo.  The Stillness of Dissolution is the exact record that they needed to make right now, and I think it is a very fitting encapsulation of how far they have come, no matter how long it took to get here or what happened along the way.

-Ian

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The Stillness of Dissolution is out now on Prophecy Productions.  For more information on Austere, visit their Facebook page.