TREEDEON returns with its all-important third album, the intriguingly titled New World Hoarder. After a five-year absence. Well, I suppose “absence” really isn’t the right word, and with such a bleakly foreboding album as Under the Machineel to follow, the time it took was the time it took, and at least some of those days were dedicated to making thoughtful steps forward.

And our first step into the result, ‘Nutcréme Superspreader’, begins with the sound of ocean birds, the tide against the shore, quickly enough joined by fuzzed out, fluid bass/guitar patterns, mangled then cauterized vocal chords over the top, in this roiling sea of feedback. ‘Omega Time Bomb’ is almost MELVINS-ish ala Gluey Porch Treatments, SOURVEIN in its syrupy, swamp plod, due in substantial part to drummer Andy Schünemann, whose used the time between albums to find his place in TREEDEON. And fit, he does. Sure, fast drummers are fun to watch, but give me the guy drenched in sweat, a death-grip on his sticks, pounding the skins like every hit matters – because it does, especially in this sort of tribal doom. “How do you want to live? How do you want to die?”, indeed.

Be forewarned, you’re not going to find “groovy” jams about dune buggies and beers with your bros under the sun with TREEDEON. The title track bristles, hackles raised and unforgiving, despite bassist/vocalist Yvonne Duckworth’s shamanistic, almost beseeching a salvation intonation of “We all wanna believe…”. ‘Viking Meditation Song’ positively shifts tectonic plates, the rumbling riff owns we all as Arne Heesch calling forth the true Viking spirit more convincingly than AMON AMARTH has in ages.

The nearly 13-minute ‘Läderlappen’ welds SAINT VITUS stomp to an almost L7 ferociousness sometimes swaying back and forth between the two, sometimes slamming them together in a collision of groove and gargantuan rumblings, Schünemann being put through a trial of Bonham/Appice-like proportions, and coming out the victor. TREEDEON’s never been an easy listen, but New World Hoarder peels the layers back from society, from past output, and even from the band themselves, revealing something even more stark, more unsettling…a mirror and the self, stripped bare.
Review By: Lord Randall

TREEDEON
New World Hoarder
Exile On Mainstream