Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Rosetta
Label: Translation Loss Records
Release: 2010
Length: 47:45
Rating: 4.9/5
Eclectic metal fit for astronauts: that’s one way to sum up the post-apocalyptic landscapes of Philadelphia outfit Rosetta, who have been drifting across plains of sonic catharsis since 2003. The core of this fertile foursome formed around Dave Grossmann, bassist of Sense Fracture, and a six-string eclectic, guitarist Matt Weed of Sundayrest. A shared vision and a passion for making music, but above all a shared hunger to keep spinning musical narratives, reconceptualized time and creation. Out of the ashes of old bands, a new post-metal wonder started taking shape, Rosetta, whose basic mission since day one has been to expand the mind and the listener’s sentiments through sonic stimulants. All in the same breath, traditional and totally untested experimental forms of songwriting, word textures and sonic manipulations blend like elven healing potions, with you at the center: cosmic beings, soul entities and proud bearers of a gorgeous pair of brain-connected ears!
A Determinism Of Morality, the third masterpiece from the broad-spectrum consciousness of Rosetta, delivers monumental structures and, beneath all that divine sound, a colossal philosophy of total transcendence. God is present in a nameless, bodiless form, and between the basic intergalactic sequences creeps in a drone-like sense of the end of time, which we’ve already had a good fill of from Isis, Pelican, Neurosis, Red Sparowes and Cult Of Luna, the lesser-known City Of Ships, and a whole palette of otherwise similar but no less punchy and addictive names of the modern musical avant-garde. The gigantism of the sound unfolds with the opener Ayil, in which vocal manipulator Michael Armine skillfully growls and howls, riding the waves of Matthew Weed’s translucent guitar distortions, in perfect harmony with the cleansing, metronomically playful drums of Bruce McMurtrie Jr. No shrapnel of harsh structures lodges in your soul, only light, soft lines of pastel comfort strung one after another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76kp6xjA-hk
Je n’en connais pas la fin takes you even deeper into space, to spheres beyond the reach of Gabriel’s angelic fanfare “Plague upon the frame / Crawling from within / Simple sullen home / Withering away / Locked behind a door / Of secrets best kept shut / Crushing venom wept / Right into the hands / Plague upon the frame / Crawling from within / Withering away / Simple sullen homes”. Right after that the voices go quiet and the all-instrumental Blue Day For Croatoa booms through the vacuum of space, glowing like a soft shimmer at the heart of the black void. The modern textures of a reborn Pink Floyd come back in waves to mate fruitfully with the elementals of the hard, rough sound of Between The Buried And Me. The clusters thicken in Release. “Heavenly bounded by time / Cast shadows at ice seas / Transmit data encode / A final message for beloved / A withering on me / The withering of me now / So sound your horn without me / Please lay your hands before I go / Lay your hands / Sound your horn / Let this go / The iron core set to implode / The withering on me / The withering of me now” are words that cut straight into soul and mind. Layered on top: heavy rhythms, the bombastic exhibitionism of perfect beauty and phenomenal soundscapes. Gorgeous and hypnotic, every single bar sticks to your softened heart, and a good measure of credit for how effective it all is goes to the production wizard who has so far worked his magic, welding joints with a metalworker’s finesse in the constructs of Pelican and City Of Ships and a sea of others. The catastrophic moment of woe is always there, but it never smothers the rolling of the massive eruption. “Lay your hands on me / Sound your horn / The moments and places / Scattered in the white light / And the first will be the last one / Ash / Burrowing / Ashes / Crawling” are fragments in the vignette of Renew, so that we can sail into the epic finale of the shattering title track A Determinism Of Morality, which binds everything above into one condensed whole. A new world is being born. “By the grace of god you saved us all / By the ending of you / Slowly reseed / With tongues we speak this night / Slowly reseed / Heavenly descended” are words that caress and console. The universe settles down and remains eternal in the future too, while we’ve reached the end of yet another outstanding album!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIH4U7poyww
Feel the pain of your own smallness and frustration, right here, right now? The boundlessness and vastness of an endless void fills the coordinates of the universe, and you are lost and lonely in the blackness of those expanses. Rosetta carry us like a satellite to the surface of a comet, and while orbiting along a trajectory of the moral and the immaculate, you may find that you, too, can get close to the divine. With their instrumental work, Rosetta have managed to outfox the gravitational field and carry the listener into new dimensions, yet this cerebral feeling is firmly rooted in solid ground of this world. The duality of the solid and the elusive shake hands perfectly, and the metaphysics of this record, on top of the exceptional music, weaves extra value into the soul, which is why Rosetta can, without shame, be placed only in the top tier of the universal music elite. Anything less would be an unfounded insult to the intellect and the sense of beauty!
Line-up
Michael Armine – sound manipulation, vocals
David Grossman – bass
Bruce McMurtrie Jr. – drums
J. Matthew Weed – electric guitar
Production
Andrew Schneider & Rosetta
Tracklist
1. Ayil
2. Je n’en connais pas la fin
3. Blue Day for Croatoa
4. Release
5. Revolve
6. Renew
7. A Determinism of Morality
