Back for their second-go-round with 2009's sophomore album,
Thresholds of Imbalance, Minnesotan post-metal adventurers
Battlefields have sort of "come home to roost," as they say, by linking up with the respected Translation Loss label; but will this hook-up enable them to set themselves apart or be further confused with the mob of like-sounding bands sharing the same office space? Well, let's see: the new album's first epic, "Disacknowledge," abandons its sludgecore-worthy introduction for jingle-jangle atmospherics far too quickly to make a strong impression, and while the track is just as swiftly rescued by a few more emphatic melodic imprints, their aesthetic proximity to
Isis hardly portends a break with the post-metal status quo. Follow-up odysseys like the ten-minute "Blueprint" and 13-minute "The Thresholds" devote a little more time to the band's brutal death-sludge inclinations (reminiscent of hillbilly geniuses
Rwake), but the former's softer contrasts once again flounder incoherently, more often than coalescing into the evanescent glories perpetrated by genre stalwarts like
Neurosis,
Cult of Luna, and the aforementioned
Isis. Somewhat shorter numbers like "Quake and Flood" and "Majestic" reign in the jams to, if not necessarily better, at least less patience-trying parameters; but, at the same time, a gaggle of quickie interludes scattered across the album ("Stasis," "Approaching," "Of Imbalance," and "Nibiru") feel so aggravatingly pointless, that more experienced listeners are bound to dismiss them as the cast-offs from inferior songs, included only so as to pad the album's duration time. Come to think of it, perhaps the listener's experience with this style of music will be the ultimate arbiter deciding the fate of
Thresholds of Imbalance, since, more troublesome than
Battlefields' quality control, is their inability to bring anything remotely innovative to the post-metal table, and this is something only neophytes will be able to overlook, for obvious reasons. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia