Re-entering our orbit after 11 years, Yakuza remain steadfast in their refusal to make life easy with the album’s most ‘difficult’ track is pointedly on-brand, but as the record unfolds it feels like this is, for all its inherent challenge, a less frantic and volatile version of the band. Voivod-ian riffs still clang up against crushing low end, and trilling woodwind incursions peck incessantly away at your senses, but it’s now possible to take short, desperate gasps of breath when the clamour drops away and eerie, kaleidoscopic expanses are revealed. Adding to the unease is Bruce Lamont. He might be a dab hand at both the sax and clarinet but sounds, vocally, like a drunk, doom metal Ian Curtis – an acquired taste within an acquired taste, perhaps, but also an apt mouthpiece for those fancying a fusionimbued Neurosis.
