Founded a decade ago, but silent since 2020, except for select live appearances, SEVEN CHAINS return with “Swollen, In Flux,” a formidable black/death metal album in which the Idahoan band expands and enhances both the experimental components of their sound and the more distinctly spiritual ones. The original trio of Noah Coleman (guitar, vocals), Chris Shaw (drums) and Scott Yost (bass) is now completed by Michael Graves on lead guitar. As on their previous records, “Swollen, In Flux” is enriched by contributions from guests, old and new: Golden Fawn lends her powerful yet ethereal vocals once again, while Logan Pintor adds color to some compositions with his trumpet.
SEVEN CHAINS’ blackened death metal is a jumble of electricity that coalesces and takes shape around skewed, paroxysmal riffs, hammered by a cohesive and powerful rhythm section. The album's experimental nature - and with it, its originality - is found in a songwriting that, while consistent with the brutality unleashed by primitive sounds, explores diverse expressive possibilities, crossing Portal’s chaotic death metal with the hypnotic avant-garde vibrations of Ved Buens Ende.
“Like most creations, ‘Swollen, In Flux’ felt like both a grand culmination and an uncertain beginning at different times during its birth,” says vocalist/guitarist Noah Coleman. “It is certainly our most frenetic recording thus far, but didn’t feel like that while it was being written. What was intentional, though, was for it to be experienced - by us as presenters and you as perceivers - as both enshrinement and exorcism at the same time. A reforming fire. A birthing corpse. Death metal at its most undulating and ecstatic.”
