You’d expect any band or artist that manages to hang on for over twenty years to exhibit a level of evolution and growth in their sound. The soul grows restless, and time and experience shape the sounds that twist into this black art. I use the word “art” intentionally here, because how else to describe the consistently challenging, consistently unexpected music that pours forth from Kayo Dot, the musical collective spearheaded by composer/musician Toby Driver? Every release pushes up against the form, and for Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason Driver celebrates a generation of music by reuniting the band responsible for their debut to craft a sinister, ethereal mirror, closing a circle that started back in 2003.

My own experience with the band started a little later, with 2006’s Dowsing Anemone with Copper Tongue. But the avant-garde nature of the compositions were already firmly established, with Driver and company largely eschewing traditional riffs and taking a classical approach to songs like “Gemini Becoming the Tripod” and the massive lurking of “On Limpid Form.” Throughout the band’s 20+ year history that spirit of adventure has ebbed and flowed to embrace the more typical tenets of the genre, with recent albums like 2019’s Blasphemy and 2021’s Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike showcasing Driver’s facility with tighter, rock arrangements.

If those records felt like a sort of rebellion against the more open and opaque veils of sounds from the band’s earlier discography, then Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason could be seen as a return to form (or formlessness). But that wouldn’t be Driver’s style, and despite reuniting the lineup responsible for the template created on debut Choirs of the Eye, the five compositions take a stirring left turn into confrontation, starting immediately with the crushing “Mental Shed.” Foregoing the low-end frequencies that would typically ground the music and make it “heavy,” there’s an untethered, floating quality that is all menace, perfectly capturing the anxiety of our times, liminal ghosts reaching out as a response to our collective unease.

That miasma of black metal recedes and ascends for the more melancholic “Oracle By Severed Head” with Driver trading his screeching rasp for a delicate croon that recalls Dead Can Dance. It’s a lovely 10 minutes of ache before the claustrophobic wailing of “Closet Door in the Room Where She Died.” Buried in the moaning saxophone lines and layers of synths is 14 minutes of utter despair, the entire band coming together to slowly suffocate the vocals. It’s a tough listen, perhaps harder than the album’s centerpiece, the 23-minute “Automatic Writing” which embraces dissonance and de-tuned guitars in a way that buoys the choir-like vocals that drift in and out of the composition.

Served up almost as a peace offering, “Blind Creature of Slime” closes Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason with something approaching (yet never quite touching) a traditional song. Those coming to Kayo Dot based on their most recent output are going to be challenged: if I’m being honest, I think anyone will be challenged here, if only because Driver and his crew manage to so perfectly capture the desperation and fear and anxiety that seems to hover around every corner, just out of sight but always making its presence known.

It’s a formidable feat, a worthy celebration of a band and legacy never content to play it safe. It also hurts. As it should.

— Chris

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Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason will be available August 8 from Prophecy Productions. For more information on Kayo Dot, check out their official website and Facebook pages.