After putting out a couple of well-received records that raised their profile enough to get them on the radar of metal's top media publications and fans of bands like Between the Buried and Me, The Faceless and Fallujah, 2018's Where Owls Know My Name marked the moment where Pennsylvania extreme metal outfit Rivers of Nihil started to really cook. Leaning more into the progressive side of their sound with the introduction of clean vocals, keyboards and brass/string instruments allowed for them to create an ambitious piece of work that blended punchy death metal with moody melodic passages to create a sprawling sound that took the listener on a commanding, subtly emotional journey. Their direct follow up effort The Work serves as a terrific counterpart to Where Owls Know My Name that shares much of the same DNA while throwing out enough curveballs to distinguish itself as a separate entity.
If Where Owls Know My Name was Rivers of Nihil's way of dipping their toes into the prog waters, The Work is their confident dive into the deep end of the pool. From the whispery, distorted vocals and sparse instrumentation of opener "The Tower (Theme from "The Work")" to the distant shredding guitars mixed with booming saxophone and jazzy drum beats of "Episode", they're unapologetically all aboard the prog weirdo express now. Some of the decisions on here (full on folky acoustic guitars driving "Maybe One Day", whatever the hell is happening instrumentally during the slower sections of "Wait") are borderline shocking for a band that didn't even utilize unclean vocals until their previous record. Committing this deeply to a balls out prog sound makes The Work harder to get into initially and the segment of the fanbase that was solely attracted to the technical/brutal death metal aspects of their sound are very likely going to be further alienated by this as those elements are featured even less here than they were on Owls. However, once the initial "what the hell is this?" oddity effect wears off from this venture further down the prog rabbit hole, the true intention of this journey becomes clear and in my case, a lot of enjoyment followed.
One of the more exciting parts of Owls was how certain tracks that were grouped together (ex: opening trio "Cancer/Moonspeak"/"The Silent Life"/"A Home" and "Hollow/Death is Real") flowed so seamlessly that felt more like epic length standalone songs than completely separate tracks. Here, they're able to expand that practice to an entire record and the results are pretty damn great.
The laser focused songwriting helps build this really strong, immersive atmosphere that paints a vivid picture of wonder, anger and longing sadness that naturally unfolds over the course of 68 minutes. No matter how nutso the experimentation gets or the specific lyrical themes being explored (meditations on the double-edge sword of the creative process, America's political climate and substance abuse are just some of the topics explored here), those melancholic yet tranquil feelings and the arrangements-which range from stunningly serene to boulder on top of a monster truck heavy-that best bring them to life are always at the forefront of the record. Being able to convey so many different emotions and utilize so many tempos over the course of a single auditory experience is a special gift and since Rivers of Nihil are still in the early days of exploring it, their potential to use it even more effectively in the future is through the roof.
Really the only bad thing about The Work is that it was released in the early days of fall when the weather hasn't really turned brisk in the Northern Hemisphere. There's something about the overall mood and textures of the melodies that just feels perfectly suited for the winter. If I were the type of person that enjoyed hiking through the woods in the snow-particularly at night, The Work would be the perfect complementary soundtrack. Since I'm not, I'll just look forward to how good this shit is going to sound when I'm freezing my ass off and looking at several mountains of snow in late December/early January.
Grade: A-
Standout Tracks:
1.Dreaming Black Clockwork
2.Terrestira IV: Work
3.Episode
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