It’s hard to say exactly how “Carvers, Farriers, and Knaves” opens BIG BRAVE’s new album. Drums pound and feedback spikes out of overdriven amps while Robin Wattie pushes her voice near the top of her range, but the noise takes a break between lines, as if the tubes of the amplifiers are taking a breath to breathe with her. It’s intimate and organic in a way usually reserved for hushed singer-songwriters sitting inches from their microphones. But there’s nothing quiet here. And yet, it somehow I’m not sure you could call it heavy, despite the squalls of distortion and massive attacks on the drum heads. At least—not until about halfway through when the band erupts in a full-scale assault.

This sort of mastery of dynamics, mood, and space is nothing new to the trio—this is their fourth full-length (fifth if you include their collaborative LP with The Body). But they’ve never demonstrated their power quite as fearsomely as on nature morte.

Vitals was actually one of the first records I reviewed here at Tuned Up. It was my introduction to BIG BRAVE, and it was love at first sight. Their brand of stretched-out, sludgy, vocal-forward post-metal carried a heft I’d never quite heard before. Tempos had the pace of tectonic plates. Guitars duetted with feedback in such a way that the amplifiers were listed alongside the instruments in the credits. Yet for all of their molten doom, Wattie’s vocal melodies were spellbinding. Her voice almost seemed more suited for a solo acoustic performance, except that she often howled near the top of her range with a fury that matched those of the instruments. If you’re thinking Chelsea Wolfe collaborating with Sunn O)))), you’ve picked up what I’ve laid down.

On nature morte though, they stretch even further into all of their superlatives to create a record that I would describe as challenging if it wasn’t so alluring. “Alluring” might not seem like the word for a six-track record where three of the songs stretch past the nine-minute mark, but even on those longer tracks, I can’t tear my attention away. It doesn’t matter if a song pounds on a single chord for minutes at a time or if they use multiple seconds of silence between fuzzy bass rumbles. I find myself waiting with rapt attention for what comes next.

Perhaps most impressive though is Robin Wattie’s vocal performance. While she’s always been a formidable vocalist, her vocal toolkit is expanded even further here, wrestling her voice between a croon that’s close to a yodel and vicious screams with ease. This isn’t the kind of music that invites singing along to—often music this patient and noisy does best without vocals. But Wattie’s sense of melody somehow finds safe passage through the threatening sonic terrain, and we’re all better for it.

nature morte is available now through Thrill Jockey.

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