Exposing what purpose the ear has not heard and the eye has not seen by negation, transited via negativa unto commandeering voice, leaves a head soaked in listless nihil. The conclusory point in this outwardly cyclic termination is an unwilling acceptance that their present state is in fact oblivion. Stirred by the spasms of an ailing will our protagonist is left cold, blank and collapsed beneath distorted senses apropos of thoroughly actualized futility. In this state of miserable torpor and psychic confinement Morón, Argentina-based avant-garde/post-black metal quartet Psicosfera trace the inequal left-and-right ribboned curls of an infinite search for purpose in vain, charting the jagged depths available to the persistent damager. Their third full-length album adds one key actor and exaggerates a once tertiary trait as their sound expands to include maniacal, rawly expressive vocals and a style which approaches dramatist and dissonant black metal full-on. Though we cannot consider ‘Summa Negative‘ a debut it may as well be a new invention, one which has been scraped and moulded from the still-caustic embers of past works and given a haunting, nightmarish severity far removed from the dreamt vignettes of the past.

Psicosfera formed circa 2013 as an instrumental post-metal quartet adventuring through the darker spectrum of said sound, the original line-up edged into post-black metal/blackgaze for the sake of mood though some tics of their past work in brutal/technical death metal and black metal bands shone through. Their play on dissonant forms of this style weren’t necessarily realized on either of their first two albums, both of which were instrumental (as in, no vocals) and focused on ideas bound to post-rock rhythms with the hi-fi thunder of post-metal guitar generally leading the way. Their first album (‘Alpha‘, 2015) wasn’t feasibly black metal from my perspective but utilized certain guitar techniques that’d created implication enough, a fine enough experiential record which doesn’t provide useful provenance in approach of ‘Summa Negativa‘; Inspiration taken from the rhythmic voicing typical of bands akin to Deathspell Omega was somewhat more evident on the band’s second album (‘Beta‘, 2017) though it’d also been more of a post-metal record by my observation. A few traits were important to observe therein per the flow of uninterrupted thoughts, aggressive and shrill guitars plunging into machine-like riffs per an admirable guitar tone, and plenty of smart yet subtle time-changes. I’m not sure the voicing of the guitars was unique but it was accomplished enough, the live wire of the recording overshadowed the cold solemnity of it from my point of view.

For ‘Summa Negativa‘ it wasn’t a small matter on-boarding a new vocalist (Julián Reggi) and a new drummer (Charly Sanchez) within the space of a year yet it seems all past work was foundational and experience enough that Psicosfera do not appear green or tentative on this at-times unhinged but never fumbling third album. Reggi‘s voice is consistently active and in feature throughout the length of the album, inserting a sickened and depressive feeling throughout while using the rocky terrain of the dual guitar scrape as telegraph for cadence. This works quite well up front, lending character to the flowingly melodic push of opener “Rising River of Frustration”, briefly recalling Mgła with the turn taken on the lead guitar thread before collapsing into gloom and reaching for an exasperated, shrieking finale. While the result may be performative in some respect the exaggerated expression available to the vocals heightens the sensorial reach of the band effectively creating a new landscape to traverse and one which comes with not unheard of but certainly unique narration.

The opening song on this album (“Rising River of Frustration”) suggests a lot up front, insisting on the grand collapse of its melody for a first impression and in the process showing the rare tuneful and melodic side of the band. This won’t necessarily keep up as evidenced by the two part “Pernicious Oblivion” which is almost exclusively dissonant in phrase, crumbling apart swells of riff and ringing tension which drift into more kinetic dodge in the second phase. So, if your first impression was one quickly linked to the style of post-black metal out of Portugal and Germany these last ten years, hold that thought until Side A has worked itself out and more of the beast has been revealed; Not every piece here is so conflicted and belligerent with its confrontational edge-cut style, though, as “Taste of Triumph” deftly unravels its irregular grooves in an almost ethereal fashion, surreal and dark per the throat-bleeding harassment of the vocalist but the rhythms themselves loose in a gracefully stepping downward motion. Other pieces, such as the Penderecki-plucked in “Dismal Landscape of Disillusion and Rejection” speak more directly to duality of modes building from swaying verses to a couple bigger bursts of aggression to punctuate the feeling set behind their vocalization. This leaves us several sub-levels in descent and (eventually) without a lower station to imagine.

The last two pieces on ‘Summa Negativa‘ were the most important per my own taste because they’d presented the sea floor, the lowest plane of their struggling psyche where we’d seen the aggression of the band hinted and broken-into but here the truly hostile spirit now hits its expressive low, despairing first for the self (“Contortionist of Perception”) and then the finality of its surroundings (“Tartarus”) without necessarily hammering away at pacing or cutting a hundred riffs. The greater presentation is non-traditional in this sense, not such an outlier as a dissonant post-black metal record but rather one that follows no real hook-driven intent and doesn’t build its songcraft from traditional black metal beyond a portion of the opener. The effect isn’t necessarily dispersal and dissolve into solution but the motion of the full listen is akin to an oily pool of ink cast into turbulent waters, spreading in obscure ways which read with no regular motion beyond descent. The feeling arrived upon is made palpable per the performances, both the over the top vocalizations and the accomplished musicianship elsewhere I suppose what remains to be seed is how profound ‘Summa Negativa‘ remains over the course of time as a taxing bout of simmering and shouting abstraction. A high recommendation.

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