A massive new collaborative project between Greg Anderson (Sunn O)))/Goatsnake/Engine Kid) and Gentry Densley (Iceburn/Eagle Twin), Ascend combines their shared love of extreme sub-sonic tones and the dark fusion jazz of the late 1960's and early 1970's. It seems an unlikely mix, but Ascend have created an amazing debut that travels through regions of abstract doom metal riffage, glacial blues, and behemoth drones that are laced with elements of fusion like horns, reeds, and Wurlitzer electric piano. I've been getting more and more obsessed with 70's fusion like The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever, Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and Weather Report, especially with the darker, more ominous strains of fusion from that period, and hearing these guys blend those elements with some of the most elephantine drone-doom riffage since early Sunn O))) made this album an immediate favorite. It's also great to see and hear Gentry Densley playing in a band that is this heavy again; his work in Iceburn in the 90's has always been criminally overlooked, and hopefully Ascend will introduce the guy to a new generation of heavy music seekers.

The six tracks on Ample Fire Within are lengthy epics that were borne out of improvisational sessions between the core duo of Anderson and Densley and the host of guest musicians that appear on the album like Steve Moore (Earth), Attila Csihar (Mayhem), Randall Dunn (Master Musicians Of Bukkake), Bubba Dupree (fuckin' VOID, man!), Bill Herzog (Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter), and Kim Thayil (Soundgarden). Massive, lumbering Melvins-style riffs plunder spacious planes of sub-bass drone and extreme low frequency rumbling (low enough to shake the walls when this gets cranked, especially when the extended feedback sculpting kicks in towards the end of "V.O.G.") when the group is at it's heaviest, but the sludge is tempered by passages of transcendent ambience and muted, jazzy textures, and the presence of the Wurlitzer electric piano is constantly felt, as soft flurries of Rhodes-style jazz piano notes drift across the background of both dirge and dronewall alike. Some of the best parts are when Steve Moore's trombones appear over the stentorian doom of "The Obelisk Of Kolob" and sound like battle horns blasting their fanfare over the marching of steel-booted troops to war, or the spacey organ and Moog drones and Native American field recordings that are layered all over the pulvering slo-mo sludge of "Her Horse Is Thunder", eventually sliced and strafed by a gnarly, congested guitar solo from Densley. Another absolutely ripping solo shows up in "V.O.G." and it's one of the album's most striking moments, when a screeching, utterly fucked-sounding atonal solo screams out of the lumbering Sabbathian riff courtesy of Bubba Dupree. Nice. Attila contributes his wordless demonic throat-chanting to the title track, but it's Densley's vocals that dominate the album, moving from the deep growling performance on "Divine" that suggests a subtle Tom Waits influence, to the processed death chants that drift slowly over the buzzing, sitar-infested dronescape of "Dark Matter".

I've been listening to this album constantly lately, and it almost won out over the new Made Out Of Babies for the featured release for this week. A fusion of jazzy organ and resonant Wurlitzer tones that sound like Chick Corea moving through glue and gargantuan abstract doom. Recommended!

The disc is nicely packaged in a six-panel gatefold case with full color artwork and an eight page booklet printed in sepia tones that features all of the lyrics.