���Figured that people didn't really begin to flock to Floor's massively downtuned sludgepop until well after the band had called it quits in 2004. After more than a decade of slogging it out in basements and dingy punk clubs, the band had just delivered the first album of their career, and it was a goddamn masterpiece of infectiously catchy and monstrously heavy tuneage that felt like some weird cross between the Melvins at their most skull-flattening, and the post-punk power pop of Guided By Voices. Things came apart in the wake of that album, though, and they soon parted ways, splitting off into newer projects Dove and Torche, and it looked like Floor was once more laid to rest. But that self titled album just kept on resonating, the band's audience continuing to grow as the years went by, even as frontman Steve Brooks plied a similar (though more complex and energetic) sound with Torche, and by 2010 Floor was once again resurrected, followed by promises of new material.

��� So here we've finally got the long-awaited album, their first new recording in over a dozen years, and as soon as that title track opens up Oblation and the guttural, bone-rattling churn of the "bomb-string" comes grinding out of your speakers, there's no mistaking where you're at. That opening dirge is on the reserved side, a mix of soaring 'gazey beauty and saurian sludge that's more there to set the mood for the rest of the album, but from there Floor roll over you like a piece of earthmoving machinery, with thirteen songs that sound like barely any time has passed since their last album and subsequent breakup over a decade ago. Hard to believe it's been that long already, actually - nothing reminds you of just how old you're getting than a comeback album from one of your favorite bands. Oblation eases the pain, though; songs like "Rocinante", "Sister Sophia" and "The Key", while maybe not quite hitting the sublime genius of the songwriting on their eponymous album, still go down real sweet, the pace of the music seemingly informed by what Brooks has been doing with Torche in the interim, these songs moving at a slightly quicker pace, while still tossing off plenty of bomb-string grenades that blow your goddamn hair back. The lurching concrete-mixer heaviness and mathy winding riffage of "The Quill" and "Trick Scene" are pretty obliterating as well, and there's a burst of hardcore punk-velocity that appears on songs like "Raised To A Star" and "Love Comes Crushing" that came as a real shock to the system, showing another side of Floor's sound, with the former song possibly coming in as my favorite on the whole disc. Listening to this new stuff reminds me how much I've always disliked the "doom-pop" label these guys were tagged with. There's no sense of "doom" here; this stuff is triumphant.