‘You cannot utter protest, You cannot question your maker, You cannot petition your accuser, The nightmare leaves its mark upon you, To prove that it is real’ (Greater Darkness [Something Worse])

‘This hell will continue, until it becomes, something worse’ is the concluding lament of Thread, and indeed the binding sentiment that defines the album.  The sense that we are now in too deep for redemption to be possible.  Our flirtations with authoritarianism, our rapacious extraction from our planet, are too far embedded.  Our fate is, perhaps, already sealed.

Thread is Ostraca’s sixth album since their 2015 debut.  What has always characterised the Richmond trio’s trajectory has been a sense of incremental refinement and quietly ambitious evolution.  The core tenets of their sound – hauntingly reflective instrumentation relentlessly sparring with eruptions of unhinged intensity, harrowingly shrieked vocals intertwined with demonically guttural growls – has remained constant.  The confidence with which they have marshalled them, however, has only grown in both assurance and inventiveness.

The beguilingly layered Enmiserate and the deceptively infectious Freedom From Pain embody these savagely cathartic, yet precisely calibrated, dynamics to perfection.  However, perhaps, the absolute highlight comes at the album’s close in the form of Greater Darkness (Something Worse).  The mournful, clean sung opening refrain priming the vicious onslaught, which then subsides into a pensive, darkly foreboding mid-section groove, before the seething violence of its climax.