INTRONAUT — Habitual Levitations (Instilling Words With Tones) (review)

INTRONAUT — Habitual Levitations (Instilling Words With Tones) album cover

Album · 2013 · Atmospheric Sludge Metal

4/5 · 2024-05-24
siLLy puPPy

The fourth album in the INTRONAUT canon came with the longest title of them all. HABITUAL LEVITATIONS (INSTILLING WORDS WITH TONES) and was released in 2013 and marked a dynamic shift in the band’s sound due to the fact after three albums the vocalists Sacha Dunable and Dave Timmick completely dropped the growly vocal aspects altogether leaving only a clean singing style throughout the album’s 9 tracks that added up to just over 57 minutes of playing time. Of course this is nothing new of progressive sludge metal bands with bands like Mastodon following a similar route however there comes a point where it just isn’t sludge metal any more!

The beauty of INTRONAUT is that this Los Angeles based group has been amazingly consistent in delivering high quality and well-designed albums ever since its debut “Void” in 2006, a trait that continues to the current day. The amazing lineup of Sacha Dunable (guitar, vocals), Joe Lester (bass, upright bass), Danny Walker (drums, samples, 2004-18) and Dave Timnick (guitar, vocals, tabla, percussion) has been stable since the band’s 2008 album “Prehistorians” therefore INTRONAUT has become a well-oiled progressive sludge metal machine that has seamlessly integrated the caustic elements of sludge metal into the context of a bonafide progressive metal band without a flinch.

In this regard, lack of extreme metal vocals disregarded, INTRONAUT continues to craft an amazing web of intricately designed progressive metal composiitons that still implement plenty of heavy sludge metal riffing along with the drumming style that is fairly common in the world of sludgery. Danny Walker still manages to slip in some ethnic sounding percussive effects and the band continues to excel at alternating heavy sludge laden riffs and grooves with the cleaner gone full prog metal guitar effects. The time signatures are ubiquitous as are the mood changes with dynamics, tempos and even instrumental timbres shapeshift in unexpected ways. The music is complex enough that the album requires a number of spins to fully sink in but provides an immediate fix as well albeit not in a way where the complex melodies will get under your skin right away.

The instrumental interplay is the album’s strongest suit with exquisite guitar riffing trade offs from both Dunable and Timmich accompanied by Joe Lester’s phenomenal virtuosic bass playing and Danny Walker’s unique percussive style that tastefully delivers slower beat keeping rhythmic percussion as well as offering jazzy drum rolls and occasional blastbeats. Likewise the sludge-heavy moments are well balanced by the slower contemplative softer parts. Due to the lack of growly vocals HABITUAL LEVITATIONS exudes a more atmospheric vibe than the previous albums which in my opinion is its downfall but nevertheless the album’s compositions are so very, very strong that it’s easy to give it all a pass.

Admittedly my least favorite album in the INTRONAUT universe and one that took the longest to warm up to simply due to the COMPLETE lack of growly vocals. Atmospheric sludge works best IMHO when both styles are fully utilized to offer the much needed contrast otherwise the music sounds like a totally abandonment of the sludge metal side of the fence and fully committed to the world of clean vocal powered progressive metal. Of course other bands like Cynic have jumped that fence but then again what came after is never as convincing or well balanced as what came before. Even Neurosis was wise enough to keep the growly vocal aspects in tact partially on the mellower albums like “A Sun That Never Sets.” After years this one has grown on me and although my least favorite of the lot, a lesser INTRONAUT album is still an excellent album indeed as this band has notched up into my top 10 sludge metal bands of all time.