Vorhex Angel 
If you have any familiarity with Nashville’s Vorhex Angel, then the first moments of Drain will turn expectations completely upside down. Though, given the band’s presence at the fringes of the musical media circus, it’s also understandable that the heft of Heavenly might have missed you when it subtly slipped out last year. The record, along with a live companion piece were both masterpieces of funneled fury, maelstroms minted to tape. Drain doesn’t entirely pack away the punishment that came with Heavenly, but keeps it pocketed until necessary, picking apart the listener in layers rather than obliterating them from the outset. “A Prophecy” is practically gentle when it opens, a ceremony of flute and percussive bells that builds to a towering thrum of drone by the time it’s complete. Still the band keeps the noise at bay, though, preferring to offer a course in discomfort over destruction.
The softness prevails through the album’s mid-section, pairing soft touches of prog laced with strings on “Weight,” and skewing almost pop on the two-part “Okie’s Song.” There’s something grand, yet devastating about “Weight,” a song that’s definitely not without its Gilmour-esque glow, but the band balances the tide pool depths with a growl of guitar and feedback froth. The more they work into the album the more the guitars gnash their teeth, pulling at the leash without tumbling into the brain-toasted tumult of their past unrestrained. Flutes knot around acoustic strums, but the band still keeps one eye towards the psych-scorch of ‘90s Japan, this time feeling more akin to the various phases of White Heaven than the heat of High Rise. They slip into a few old habits on “Honey,” though, uncapping the cataclysm as the song peaks, an incandescent descent into their love of amp fry. The record pushes the band far beyond the bounds of their shadowy beginnings, an intricate journey of tension and torsion, constantly working to wrestle with its love for beauty and its need for destruction.
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