photos by Christina Oddo
Italian death doom outfit ASSUMPTION will release their overwhelming third album, Paradox Of The Arrow, this Friday on 20 Buck Spin, who today unveils the record, now streaming in its entirety.
With the guitars and bass for Paradox Of The Arrow tracked by the band in Italy and Slovenia, the material was reamped alongside the recording of the drums, vocals, and synth as well as mixing and mastering engineered and handled by Claudio Mulas. The cover art was painted by Mariya Popyk (Lugubrious Garment, Tomarum) and photographed by Marco Zanin, and the layout was handled by Claudio Collina, including photography by Cristina Oddo.
Fans of Disembowelment, Spectral Voice, Mortiferum, Mournful Congregation, Evoken, and Indesinence will not want to miss ASSUMPTION’s Paradox Of The Arrow.
Vocalist/guitarist Giorgio Trombino writes, “The fruit of endless hours of passion, travels, obstacles, and visions has come to light. This album is a representation of our moment in time. It has opened several doors in our mind. We’ll never cease to mutate because this is the destiny we’ve chosen as a band.
“We acknowledge all those who worked hard to make this happen. Follow the arrows.”
Listen to ASSUMPTION’s vast Paradox Of The Arrow, now streaming on YouTube HERE
20 Buck Spin will release Paradox Of The Arrow on LP, CD, and digital formats this Friday the 13th of November. Preorders can be placed at the label webshop HERE and Bandcamp HERE.
Paradox Of The Arrow is a new descent into the strange temporal architecture of ASSUMPTION’s death doom. Since their earliest recordings, the band has treated the genre less as a monolith set in stone than a space in which mass, duration and atmosphere can be manipulated. On Paradox Of The Arrow, that process advances further, stretching the apparent distance between one moment and the next until time itself dissipates into an altered abstraction.
ASSUMPTION’s immense low-end foundations remain, but the band’s heaviness is rarely a matter of density alone. Riffs unfurl geologically, like the convergent boundary to a subduction zone, before abruptly accelerating into passages of violent death metal, only to collapse again into long intervals of suspension, dissonant guitar resonance and spectral ambience. Guttural vocals emerge from deep within while drums alternately measure out enormous spaces and rupture them without warning. Melody appears in oblique fragments rather than conventional resolution, and psychedelic details flicker at the margins, where quiet stillness can feel as consequential as impact and the vibrations of beauty and dread dissolve into an amorphous shimmering light.
Taking its name from Zeno’s ancient paradox of motion – the proposition that an arrow in flight, observed at any single instant, is motionless – Paradox Of The Arrow finds an apt philosophical analogue for ASSUMPTION’s music. These six tracks from the depths draw the listener through successive states of movement and inertia, collapsing the notion of linear time. Across its prolonged passages and sudden eruptions, the album continually distorts the sense of scale and duration. By the time the arrow reaches its mark, the path behind it feels far less certain than when it began.
“Monstrous gutturals rise up from cavernous depths, and the music seems to miserably wail and feverishly convulse. The drumming is tremendous, and so is the band’s ability to create coherent melodic through-lines in a constantly changing experience.” – No Clean Singing
“Few bands have recreated the sound of death-doom pioneers Disembowelment as accurately as Italy’s ASSUMPTION. Paradox Of The Arrow throws out some seriously heavy, rumbling guitar riffs and massive drumming. The growls emanate from the deepest abyss. The album is not as dense as you might think, however. There’s a light psychedelic feel in spots, building enormous spaces before bursting them entirely.” – Invisible Oranges
“ASSUMPTION’s thick, bruising doom captivates and flattens on Paradox Of The Arrow, a weighty creation that blackens hearts. Power that might seem motionless actually does ample damage to your psyche and body, putting you through the ringer but also amplifying your emotions. This is dark and foreboding but also weirdly spacious, an album that sticks with you long after the music stops.” – Meat Mead Metal
“Paradox Of The Arrow sees the band maintain their exemplary standard of quality whilst pushing their sound unto new frontiers, expanding what an ASSUMPTION opus means for us as fans and with finer, lasting feelings determining our opinions on this record. November is spoiling us with great releases and Assumption, through 20 Buck Spin, are another providing such.” – The Razor’s Edge
“The closest points of reference remain the same as on previous records: the seminal Disembowelment, a less funereal-leaning Evoken, and the ever-underrated Indesinence. At this stage, however, it feels almost unfair to draw comparisons for a musical formula that has few equals in the contemporary extreme metal landscape—a testament to the quartet’s class and freedom of thought. We are no longer talking about outsiders, but rather true leaders of a movement—albeit one that remains niche and carefully guarded within the depths of the underground. [translated]” – Metalitalia
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The post ASSUMPTION: Paradox Of The Arrow, The Engulfing Third Full-Length From Italian Death Doom Quartet, Is Now Streaming In Its Entirety; Album To Be Released Friday On 20 Buck Spin first appeared on Earsplit Compound.