Album Review: Floating – “Hesitating Lights” (Progressive Death Metal/Post-Punk)

Written by Westin

I’ve been away from music writing for many months now. Between a new job and the worsening state of everyday life I’ve been depressed and overwhelmed in equal measure. It’s been hard for me to engage with music meaningfully of late, not that there hasn’t been an abundance of good records this year. But none have quite grabbed me and made me want to wrestle with them quite like this brand new Floating release. In a dark, dreadful world sometimes nothing’s better than to get stuck into some dark, dreadful music.

Formed in Upsalla, Sweden sometime after the dissolution of their previous band Morbid Illusion in 2018, Floating comprises bassist and drum programmer Andreas Hörmark, and guitarist and vocalist Arvid Sjödin, with the pair sharing synthesizer duties. The pair released their debut album The Waves Have Teeth in 2022 before signing to Transcending Obscurity.

On their face, death metal and post-punk are not typical bedfellows. Death metal’s intentional courting of ugly, ‘unmusical’ sounds juxtaposes starkly with post-punk’s shiny, oft-melodic prettiness. There is certainly some precedent in Tribulation’s shift from death to gothic metal and the Peaceville bands, and in recent years post-punk exploratory footing in niche post-black metal has expanded, but what Floating is doing still feels unique.

Take opener “I Reached the Mew”: a rising synth tone builds, ominously, before dropping out to a familiarly bright and jangly post-punk lick accompanied by a drumbeat that’s unmistakably meant for dancing. This already doesn’t sound like a death metal record, and in the exact moment you begin to wonder if I’ve lied to you, you’re immediately smashed in the face with blastbeats and wall-of-sound bass that are cut through by the continuing bright lead guitar. Arvid’s playing throughout the record is tasteful, simple when necessary and punishing when the time comes. This scant first thirty seconds of music already showcase a sense of dynamism and sonic variety that some bands struggle to achieve in their whole careers.

Hearing death growls alongside melancholic neon hooks is a recipe in finding a common ground in the beautiful ugliness of life that both death metal and post-punk envision. Andreas’ stellar rhythm section is the central pillar around which everything coalesces as his bass often adds a heaviness that complements the more moody guitars. ‘Progressive death metal’ can mean a lot of things to people, and for Floating it means leaning away from the cosmic sci-fi and flashy solo-ing and more towards the texturally smoky and sonically weird like on the follow-up track “Grave Dog”. The death metal side of this record is absolutely bona fide, appealing to fans of weird death metal like Demilich, Diskord and other strange Scandinavian bands – heavy and aggressive but also off-kilter in ways that feel crazed and exciting.

The halfway point reaches the semi-title track “Hesitating Lights / Harmless Fires” building on a slowburn movie soundtrack synth line accompanied by an aching lead guitar that subtly shifts into a dance floor pulser and mosh rager all in one. That ever audible bass and I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Programmed-Drums maintain an incredibly fun momentum that makes it easy to imagine shaking ass in a club while the guy next to you shotguns a beer before smashing faces in the pit. Could Bela Lugosi headbang? He does now.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight the excellent cover art courtesy of Påhl Sundström. The slight structural separation over the figures exposed musculature suggests a violence familiar to death metal fans while retaining the restrained morbidity of classic gothic records. The bold orange is utterly striking and alien but also recognizable in the world of underground music. This is what cover art is meant to do – evocatively communicate the artistic intentions to the audience in wordless manner. I wanted this record to be incredible as soon as I saw the art and it absolutely lives up to that expectation.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Floating have found new ground in extreme metal, an increasingly difficult proposition in a landscape where the internet allows and encourages countless ideas for the sake of “Why not?” Hesitating Lights is testament that the underground is where art continues to twist and gyrate and lurk in all its lovable ugly darkness.