The Heretic's Bargain [Vinyl]

Rangda! They planted a False Flag in the blood-soaked turf
of the contemporary rock-politik. They were Formerly Extinct
before you ever even THOUGHT about giving it up for good!
Now, five years since ascending to collective Rangdadom, the
flower-plower trio are back in your phase! This time around,
Rangda strikes The Heretic’s Bargain for you — but have a
care, foolish listener; not only is it an offer you can’t refuse,
this here’s a deal you can’t repeal! Ever since Sir Richard Bishop, Ben Chasny and Chris
Corsano banded together, the supergroup moniker has
stuck in Rangda’s collective craw. We only meant: gee, what
a super group! It’s boss stuff, kids! But whatever, and what’s
done is done — The Heretic’s Bargain takes a nail gun to that
idea’s coffin and buries it ALIVE, firmly reinforcing Rangda
as a band with a shared intuition, instead of the sum of
three separate (though insanely great) parts. After years of
recording and touring together, Bishop and Chasny’s guitar
playing has mutated via some kind of lateral gene transfer of
their musical DNA, and the rhythms ridden by Rangda feel
mutually funded (though Corsano’s beat-making is as finelined
and rawly inspired as ever). With The Heretic’s Bargain,
it’s harder to tell who wrote what, and Rangda (and you) is
better off for it. The Heretic’s Bargain takes territories that Rangda explored
on their first two albums — the abraded fury and free
forms off False Flag and the serpentine Rang-dang-doodle
songatechture from Formerly Extinct — and evolves them
further into a grand unified I-know-I-don’t-know-what-it-is-
(but-I-like-it) development in music. The Heretic’s Bargain is
the sound of Rangda — and, without getting all rock-opera
on you (but a little AOR, to be sure), The Heretic’s Bargain
is best taken as a whole, from the initial locked-down snare/
guitar strafing and tension-rattling choruses of “To Melt The
Moon” to the side-long “Mondays Are Free at the Hermetic
Museum.” Lot