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Alex Rüdinger performs "Cubensis" from the "Fluid Existential Inversions" album. Subscribe to Alex's channel for more: / @mdterps1042
It's been a five-year gap since 2015's The Direction Of Last Things, the longest between any two Intronaut records, but with good reason. "Some of this music was written within a week of the last record being released, and we originally wanted to get into the studio to make this album back in early 2017, but I think the band was kind of burnt out and I personally was definitely burnt out, and we decided to take a year off before committing to a new album and the touring stuff that comes with it. In fact I personally wasn't sure I still had the energy to keep doing this band at all. But after a little time off, I kept writing on my own and I realized I love making this music whether we're an active band or not." A change in the unit's ranks set things back another year, but soon enough they were back on track. "After being a semi-full-time band for fifteen years, I think we needed a little rest. I think writing without any deadline really helped this music too, in that we could really spend time obsessing over what we wanted it to be. It was almost like writing our first record again." The addition of drummer Alex Rudinger (The Faceless, Whitechapel) to the Intronaut lineup definitely played a key part in how the record came together, Dunable praising his obsessive work ethic and a "dedication to his craft like I've never seen before." With all the players in place, it was a case of getting down to work and creating the ultimate Intronaut album, and Dunable knew exactly what he wanted from the start. "We just wanted it to be huge in every way. More heavy, more challenging, more 'weird', and bigger sounding. Just the most absurdly 'Intronaut' album we could come up with. When I was a teenager and really absorbing music like King Crimson, Gorguts, Yes, or Neurosis, the thing I loved about them was that it was almost unlistenable at first - like just too much to digest - but after a few listens, you hear the genius and the beauty in it, and even twenty years later, I can still discover little nuggets in that music, and it's glorious. And that's the kind of world I want to create for myself, and other listeners of Intronaut." The result is an album rife with striking contrasts, songs that veer from the punishingly violent to the achingly beautiful, often in seemingly jarring fashion, but there is very much a method to their madness, and dig a little deeper and everything makes sense. The band also integrated keyboards for the first time, taking their love of mellotron and analog synths and making them a part of the Intronaut sound.