Somewhere between a predecessor, a reunion and a supergroup, Tusk have received plenty of attention in recent years thanks to sharing most of their membership with Pelican, whose brand of instrumental art-metal via a Chicago post-rock lens has been winning many fans worldwide. Funny thing, though: Tusk, who predated Pelican's formation by some years and have been first rereleased and now fully revived for what has been wryly called a farewell effort in The Resisting Dreamer, are actually the better band.
Compared to this year's often-anemic Pelican album, City of Echoes, The Resisting Dreamer—performed as one song divided into four parts—is a much more varied and all-encompassing modern metal effort. On the disc, Tusk cover everything from slow-burn, delicate atmospherics to screaming, frenetic chaos (vocals don't come from original singer Jody Minnoch, but rather guests Evan Patterson and Toby Dot, who find the necessary ranges for the whole piece, from the stentorian to the throat-shredding). “Cold Twisted Aisle” is a monster on its own, building to the kind of dramatic, tightly wound climax favored by Godspeed You! Black Emperor and their many followers, but actually going somewhere with it into the coda—like “Life's Denial,” whose mournful but harsh guitar and a steady riff feel like a monumental requiem to the end of everything, as it shifts into a rough-edge glaze of feedback and agonized screams. That the final song is titled “The Lewdness and Frenzy of Surrender” may almost seem parodic; that it sounds exactly like that title—some great unholy roar of metal-into-the-grave that ties Black Sabbath, the Cure and My Bloody Valentine (and more) into a knot—justifes it all.
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