MEGATON LEVIATHAN is not a band. It’s a temple. A church of sorts, a cathedral of mesmerizing sonic beauty, and Past 21 Beyond The Arctic Cell is the latest statement in this legacy, this lineage of immense cosmic power. Throughout the years, the band has been the catalyst for the emotions and visions of Andrew James Costa Reuscher, a real lone wolf and drifter in America’s finest doom. A timid and shy Portland, Oregon, native who has never given up the grasp on his beliefs that Megaton is an unrenounceable source of catharsis and expiation for his soul. Megaton’s music, while it cleanses Andrew’s soul, it also cleanses the souls of all who encounter his majestic craft. Megaton’s music is the sound of liberation. Of sublimation thorough a pathway of sonic pillars that lead up into a vast and desolate night sky in which all existence disintegrates into stardust and cosmic wind. There is such sadness, beauty, solitude and vastness in this music, that you surrender to it in a breakdown of puzzling desperation, but love every moment of it as you get lost in your own hallucinating mind….
While Megaton’s music sounds inconsolable and reckless in its materialization of desolate sadness as it traces an endless trail of tears, it is also permeated by such a greatness and austere imposition that it is almost impossible to not bow down in front of this sonic mammoth from another dimension, and pay due respect to its vastness and colossal emotivity. Aside from the overload of complete psychedelic downfall that literally rules over the record, there are a ton of other mesmerizing elements in this album that create a surreal and voyage-like splicing of elements: Middle-Eastern, Persian, Indian and other tribal and exotic influences permeate the work – apparent mostly in the eight minute long psychedelic dirge that is The Foolish Man – making it a mammoth kaleidoscope or thundering and hallucinating sound.
Paces are slow, dirgy and almost ceremonial, evoking the tides of slumber of the best psychedelic doom in the vein of Ufomammut, Electric Wizard, Boris and the such, but the industrial and electronic architecture built by Reuscher on top of this primordial doom foundation literally materializes an enormous spaceship of sound that levitates from a barren earth, floating up into a hallucinating and vivid night sky full of colors and shapes, as if it’s being swallowed by a shimmering aurora. To all degrees, Megaton Leviathan are one of the most original sounding, moving, emotional and epic psychedelic doom metal bands to have ever tread our earth. Their songs are built upon a taste in melodies and a choice of sounds that assures a pure and unparalleled emotional time travel, something that few bands can even dream of accomplishing. Again, Megaton are not simply just a band, they are a temple of sound, in which a very unique sonic ceremonial is held cyclically. Our heads bow to the greatness and purity of this space mammoth from another dimension.
Out now on Seventh Rule Recordings.
