I know that “skramz” might be a word that feels just as dirty as “emo”, so this will be my only mention of it. At its peak, the genre existed as an umbrella for the most guttural and emotionally poignant post-hardcore. Cassus might be one of the last bands to really do the genre justice. Their previous LP, This Is Dead Art; This Is Dead Time; But We May Still Live Yet was brutal and unrelenting. On it, the band offered a listening experience that was a surefire moment of pure cathartic bliss. And somehow, they’ve managed to top it. The band will release a new album called Separation Anxiety this Spring on IBF Records and Dog Knight Productions — and the last two years have seen the band evolve into something more ravenous and powerful than they could have dreamed.
On “Ceaseless Tumult,” the Norwich-based emotional hardcore outfit approach the brevity of life with a voracious and insatiable blend of anxiety and outrage. When talking to the banc, they expressed that a lot of the song comes from the idea that we create illustrious fallacies just to be able to “make sense” of it isn’t something we need to understand, so much as it something that we all play only a small part in. The quartet comes hot off the tails of a ferociously delivered second verse with a more subdued delivery of the lyrics “trapped in the infinitely finite/moment that is consciousness/constantly erased and rewritten” that do an incredible job summing up the driving force of “Ceaseless Tumult” and it’s seemingly insatiable appetite for self-realization.
When asked about the track, Cassus said: “This song is about how we project concepts onto the world around us in order to make sense of life, but in a single moment of realization (or amnesia) we can see through the cracks and be overwhelmed by just how unknowable existence really is. Every moment we experience is a delicate construction of ideas and memories that is entirely subjective – another person might experience the same event in a totally different way to us; they might even believe a very different event is taking place. Ceaseless Tumult is an expression of how terrifying and disorientating it is to lose hold of our inner universe even for a moment, because that’s long enough to be swept into the unknown – when you see “time” as a concept we project onto the world in order to make sense of things, suddenly the illusion is shattered and you can’t tell the difference between a minute and an eternity.”
You can stream “Ceaseless Tumult” below.
https://soundcloud.com/measuresuk/ceaseless-tumult/s-zy2od
Separation Anxiety is out this April on IFB Records (US) and Dog Knights Productions (UK) and is available for pre-order here.
