BIG|BRAVE: A Chaos of Flowers

Despite their seismic walls of noise mirroring the chaos of these times, BIG|BRAVE are a band not born for them.

Where most artists from the alternative underground have rightly struggled in a world where capitalism and conflict reigns supreme, in their own way the Montreal three-piece have defied the odds. Touring regularly throughout North America, Europe and the United Kingdom since their 2021 masterpiece, Vital, while their struggle is as real as anyone else’s, this is a band kicking against the elements; their hard work and willingness to play the long game both on the road and in the studio rendering them as one of the few success stories from the more recent times.

Last year’s nature morte was another document reaffirming their position as exclusive exponents of hypnotic heaviness. Sweltering tremors courtesy of singer/guitarist Robin Wattie, guitarist Mat Ball and percussionist Tasreen Hudson. Individuals with unique styles yet somehow gelling to create the beautiful noise, and in doing so, taking metal to new places through the lens of avant-garde.

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Nature morte’s follow-up and so-called sister album, A Chaos of Flowers sees BIG|BRAVE dialling down the ferocity with something that washes over you as opposed to rearranging your internal organs. It furthers the band’s explorations of tonality, taking the ideas from their 2021 collaboration with The Body, Leaving None But Small Birds, and Ball’s 2022 solo offering, Amplified Guitar, to form something that is a true outlier in the band’s canon.

Whilst contrasting, there remains a lineage between nature morte and A Chaos of Flowers, not least through the artwork, but with the quiet/loud juxtapositions of the two linked purely through tone. And with it, on A Chaos of Flowers, there’s an argument that – despite its notable quietness – BIG|BRAVE sound and feel as heavy as they’ve ever been.

Another noticeable shift for the band comes with Wattie’s vocals, which are higher in the mix. Their poetic snippets, inspired by the poems of Emily Dickinson and Emily Pauline Johnson and the works of Esther Popel, Yosan Akiko and Renee Vivien, are raw, brutal and abstract. It sees Wattie navigating through the morbid realities of the day to day, as the band excavates to new emotional depths.

Taken from Dickinson’s poem, I Felt a Funeral In My Brain, A Chaos of Flowers begins with the cracked folk of I felt a funeral. Ball’s rustic drones are in slow-motion, with build-ups of rolling dissonance that cross-pollinate with the sound world of slowcore. And later with canon : in cannon, the band delivers something that feels like a beautiful homage to the late Mimi Parker. An extension of the scarred sonics of Low’s Double Negative, as Ball’s hot currents of feedback and Hudson’s minimalist percussion form the sonic bedding for Wattie’s evocative vocals.

Meanwhile, the grinding tremor of not speaking of the ways is essential headphones listening. Something that rumbles through the mind, BIG|BRAVE capture a disorder that mirrors the world’s current state and it’s achieved purely through sound. In fact, no other band has done this better.

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Chanson pour mon ombre continues to see the band stretching the boundaries with a woodsy concoction of knotty avant folk and jazz echoes that reveal a new tenderness. Theft follows a similar path, where Wattie takes centre stage with a harrowing verse that feels like an extension to Vital’s lead track, Half Breed.

Quotidian : solemnity is maximalism with guitars, as Wattie’s anguished howls are split by Ball’s white noise that oozes from the speakers like a weeping wound. It’s the Seth Manchester effect, designed to unsettle in what is sensory befuddlement purely through the force of noise. And that feeds into Moonset. Beginning with a misty folk aesthetic (“the moon is sinking into the shadowland”), Ball stamps his authority by ending the song with another torrent of sound in what feels like the closing chapter for of both A Chaos of Flowers and nature morte.

This isn’t something that has immediate effect. While as absorbing as ever, A Chaos of Flowers is cerebral. There’s a new dimension here, but it unravels slowly, requiring patience to reap the greatest rewards. And the deeper one goes into the BIG|BRAVE sound world, the realisation becomes clearer each time. A Chaos of Flowers could very well be the band’s defining statement.

A Chaos of Flowers is out tomorrow via Thrill Jockey. Purchase from Bandcamp.