ZĀM - Waves of Seeing

 

Released: November 24

Captivating and difficult in alternating moments, Waves of Seeing is a heavy experience that challenges the listener's ability to ignore genre and simply enjoy the music. The eclectic trio that forms ZĀM takes every opportunity to incorporate every ounce of weirdness they could muster into the album as the tracks quickly jump around from a guitar driven wall of noise to a fast fast paced menagerie of loopy electronics to slow and spacey ambient noise. All of this transpires in a seeming blur even though the total runtime nears an hour, which I attribute to the psychedelic and mind-bending aesthetic that is present in every single moment regardless of what the tone of the individual track is. 

There is some truly amazing depth of experimentation here, especially with the vast differences in tracks. "The Wind," for instance, is a deep and dark sludge metal inspired track that drones on with slow and brutally heavy guitar riffs that mostly dominate the track with help from some rapid percussion and something that sounds like a distorted theremin. "I, Phototaxis" is similarly dark and heavy minus all the guitar. The guitar in this one is replaced by deep booming percussion and a searing bit of electronics noise that runs circles around the drums. Then we come to "Echelon 1, 2, & 3" which veers off into purely psychedelic rock in the vein of bands like Monster Magnet with the whole track being basically a long and incredible guitar solo that is periodically joined by those noisy electronics that keep showing up everywhere. There is way more than I can describe going on in this release. Even if I took the time to try and describe everything in full, I doubt I could do justice to the unreal amount of exploration ZĀM has accomplished here.