Mare is one of the most important artistic contributions in the entire collected history of the Human race. Ha! But no, seriously; If Hearwax was around for the release of this five song headstone (2004, Hydrahead), it would deservedly get a score of 9.9. No. Seriously; there is no written music, no possibly conceived music past and present that is as bleak, miserable, shocking , and touching as Mare. What undoubtedly is the most qualitative and compelling album I have selected for Weekly Worship so far is, as stated, important. Its influence is not necessarily felt today; there are no new Mares, perhaps in part that this EP is not altogether innovative. It transcends accolades of originality or contributing new ideas to a genre… It exists in its own sphere, so oblique and hostile that any other sane band would wisely detour around it. No one bothers it. Everyone lets it sleep there. We can still look at it, in the distance and be utterly terrified of it.

Forming like mitosis from The End and Circle Takes The Square, Mare used both band’s emotionally charged chaos to breed something more desolate in their self titled; this is not a sinister album, but it is abused. Tyler Semrick- Palmateer again uses his unique performance style from Transfer Trachea Reverberations From Point: False Omniscient and allows his tenure to wash over slower compositions. The words are progressively stressed over the course the course of the project, breaking in ways that redefine our understanding of a scream… Or perhaps it is only the instinctual vocalization that we forgot in favour of designer muppet burps. Regardless, even from “Annisette” , his words are unsettling, rupturing under the heavenly descent after the two-minute mark in “Palaces”, but never alienate. Semrick-Palmateer uses many choral motifs that were only hinted at in Transfer – an addition that, on the surface, is a neat little differentiation from competing doom-core bands, but only adds further layers of haunting resonance. The orgiastic “Sun For Miles” delivers a set of notes that are attacked by alternating vocal harmonies, converging into echoing guitar chords that could be the most devastating melody progression ever devised. It really is heartbreaking, and yet how does that transfer to musical quality? For such a medium to become so interpersonal without even knowing the artists personally is a transcendent event; the ability to have a moment of complete empathy has always been an unspoken goal when listening to challenging music. This album delivers several of these moments.

The actual musical mechanics that build the atmosphere of collected emotions range similarly to the quieter elements of The End’s “Opalescence”, and amp up the doom aesthetic. Melody plays parts in even a recognizably metal way, such as the off time thump in “They Sent You”. The jazz motifs that coda certain sections of the album are not abrupt for the sake of disarming the listener, but transformations of the same themes running throughout. The percussion is especially dense, where the kick is sparingly used to build chain reactions with a ride so potent that the entire kit feels like a rhythmic powder keg. As the decade closes out, it leaves ten years of music and film that effectively belonged to the humans of my generation. It is a bit unnerving that the greatest album of the decade – and by extension my entire coming of age – happens to be Mare, a disc so thoroughly unsettling and steeped in raw excruciating energy, I almost wish I had not made the decision to go from Black Sails In The Sunset to The Satellite Years… Instead of what though, The Arcade Fire? That is not a slight against those whose tastes are aligned with quality accessible music (quality, people, quality), but this writer’s love for the aggressive music spectrum is not the remains of adolescent restlessness, but to find other elements like Mare.