Normally, when people think of the union between doom and sludge they think of an overwhelming beast of heaviness and intensity with a lumbering presence that only strikes when the moment is right when darkness is at its most complete and the listener is most vulnerable. Acts like Bell Witch have perpetuated that concept to immense effect, but there’s always room for a little bit of light even where we normally wouldn’t have expected it. In a genre that’s always immense, Amarok has managed to return to us in such a form that’s as uncompromising as it is oddly hopeful.

Immensity is always one thing to pull off, but to bring it to the table in such a form that feels meaningful, potent, and overflowing with evocative meaning, then you are simply going to have to dive into a different mindset altogether. It’s all too easy to make material in this drawn-out world of sludge metal dark and depressing given the themes that are often intertwined with the genre itself, so to find yourself overcoming those tendencies and find yourself side-by-side with the concept of regeneration even if it means near complete decimation. Pulling from trauma that’s personal within the band as well as that of their home, northern California, as it still reels from sprawling wildfires, Amarok has made a truly captivating release of overwhelming heaviness of the soul with “Resilience”. Five tracks spread out over the course of a 64-minute runtime, this is a truly mammoth album that holds nothing back and really knows how to carve away at the human soul to a meticulous degree. Through drawn-out rhythms and what seems to be impenetrably bleak skies, “Resilience” sees Amarok rise from the darkest of ashes like the most brilliant phoenix after a truly horrific experience that one cannot always easily bounce back from. And yet, it’s through that great loss which the final rising behemoth at the end of “Resilience” is something that emboldens the very best of what the natural realm can do in the face of supreme adversity.

Hope, even when taken with immense strife, is not often something that we see in a sound such that this. It’s refreshing in a great many ways with the execution of such magnificence something that cannot easily be duplicated from one band to the next no matter the talent at hand. Amarok has been a rising name in the bleak darkness for some time now, and it’s with all that is presented with “Resilience” that Amarok has made quite a leap forward for both themselves and the sound they masterfully represent.

LISTEN to “Resilience” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Amarok on Facebook here.