Band:	Kollapse
Album:	AR
Style:	Sludge metal
Release date:	March 2024

01. Ar
02. Autofagia
03. Død
04. Forn
05. Dekomposition
06. Kokon
07. Transformation

This review discusses AR, the new release from Kollapse... no, I’m not talking about KOLLAPS\E... no, I’m not talking about Kollapsed... no, I don’t know why Scandinavian post-metal bands are obsessed with this word.

In fairness to Kollapse, not only are the Danes from a different country to the two Swedish bands I mentioned in the introduction, but they’ve also produced quite a bit more material. While KOLLAPS\E and Kollapsed only released their debut albums last year, Kollapse are now three releases deep and going strong. They’re also the least conveniently categorized into post-metal out of the three groups; their 2021 album Sult, my introduction to the group, was a particularly heavy interpretation of the style, one that veered into straight sludge territory on more than one occasion while also taking minor cues from the likes of math and prog. AR continues the theme from Sult of having striking artwork centered around a face, but also pushes the needle further towards sludge.

One way in which AR moves slightly away from post-metal is in having shorter songs; each track on the record is a minute shorter on average than those on Sult. In these relatively condensed runtimes, Kollapse focus on grim malevolence; nasty guitar tones deliver pounding riffs and jarring math-tinged complexity on “Autofagia”. There are still dynamics across this and other songs, though, as the caustic first half of the track temporarily pulls back in favour of more contemplative soundscapes.

AR does retain some of the rhythmic fluidity of the previous album, which is on full display during “Død”; its mesh of riffs all play around with time signatures and groove patterns, in a manner that adds a degree of intrigue to the brooding, bleak heaviness carried by the instruments and pained shrieking vocals. There’s also some nice Mastodon-style lead guitar bits woven into segments of the song to add extra flavour. “Kokon” later in the record is also a good vehicle for exploring these different sounds.

Most of AR maintains a pattern of weaving softer snippets into predominantly heavy songs, but “Form” does represent a slight shift in priorities, firstly by opening with quieter sounds, and then by holding back on the intensity when Kollapse initially incorporate distortion, with the song only really bursting around the halfway mark. The album’s longest song, “Dekomposition”, immediately follows it and somewhat flips that script, dedicating most of its first half to heaviness, distortion and dissonance, before decomposing, as it were, into noise and feedback in the closing minutes; there’s a touch of Sumac to it, although unlike Sumac, I don’t lose the will to live when listening to “Dekomposition”. The overall softest song on AR is saved until last; the prolonged use of clean tones without percussion on “Transformation” is something of a musical transformation by Kollapse, and even when the song eventually gets heavier, there’s a sadness and longing to the tones that is mostly absent otherwise on the record.

I’m not quite as taken with AR as I was Sult, and ultimately it’s not sufficiently remarkable in what it does as to have great appeal to those without a firm affinity for sludge or post-metal, but it’s nevertheless another respectable effort from the group, and one that helps Kollapse stand out in the Kollapse metal scene.