True Widow I.N.O.

Even when stepping away from their electric monolith sounds, as on opening
acoustic track “For Grace,” True Widow displays an innate understanding of
the space between the notes, and the stormy tensions that can arise from
them. Under cover of a bluegrass motif, guitarist D.H. introduces a new
chapter of their story, one which brings about feelings of decay and returning
to the earth in its wavering, finger-picked threnody. The title track follows,
fourteen and a half minutes of sonorous dirge, relies on single-chord riffing
and minor-key derivations, as opposed to the cyclical compositions found on
their last full-length As High as the Highest Heavens and From the Center to
the Circumference of the Earth. This brooding leads “I.N.O.” to more abstract
directions than any other True Widow offering thus far, experimenting with
percussion-free drone elements, surprise surges in tempo and intensity, and at
the ten-minute mark, a drop-in to silence, fading down into the depths and
return changed and surreal. The EP closes with three more brand new songs,
clued in to what True Widow does best: creating a large, heavy space that
eschews the trappings of what we know “large” and “heavy” to mean in the
context of modern rock music; songs with drive but not necessarily aggression,
volume but not overload, a peaceful protest against garish imagery and
attentionbreaking riff-fests.