Early in the summer of 2011, fans of This Will Destroy You found themselves on a ship in stormy waters. There were those who chose to abandon the doomed vessel, wary of the deafening and encompassing hurricane of noise that was Tunnel Blanket‘s lead-in “Little Smoke”, and there were those who remained and accepted the nebulous void that awaited them below the surface. Counting myself among the latter group, I eagerly let its ocean of uninhibited sound completely absorb me. And these past few years since, I’ve only gone deeper, engrossing myself in music from artists who too favored shoegaze, noise, drone, and for a select few, church burning.

With their newest LP, Another Language, coming out next week on Suicide Squeeze, the Texas quartet isn’t dragging us deeper into the abyss as much as they are surfacing us too quickly to give us one blissful case of the bends. The first track “New Topia” begins with the ethereal chords that call us back to the sample of Temple Grandin used in Tunnel Blanket‘s ultimate denouement “Powdered Hand” where Grandin goes on about the biological reason for the “light at the end of the tunnel” phenomenon that we experience when we die. “New Topia” acts as just that: the very light that ultimately separates our souls from our failing bodies, bringing us further into this new realm. The next track, “Dustism”, named appropriately after the artistic fascination with particles floating in space and their respective individuality, gives substance to this alternative heaven, allowing sound and reverb alike to linger and build until finally everything explodes into fuzz and light.

Blinded, we are then guided into “Serpent Mound” where subdued light gently leads us onto kind ground before we are unleashed onto a vast ceremonial ground with sprawling rolling hills akin to the track’s Ohio-based namesake. For the first time on the record, a track aggressively takes hold of us and refuses to let us go until we are fully immersed. “War Prayer” then comes along somberly, carrying the significance of its surroundings heavy on its shoulders, before finally breaking down to weep and commiserate.

Hope and comfort lay in the album’s first cool down, “The Puritan”, where exhausted and overwhelmed spirits have come to rest briefly reminding us that paradise is not without the weary, and “Mother Opiate” is there to aid, but with what motives? There is a false sense of comfort and yet still one to be enjoyed in these tracks that make up the bridge of the album. Guitarist Christopher Royal King’s noise influences were intelligently realized when he released Online Architecture under the moniker of his noise side project, Symbol, earlier this year on Holodeck, and those same influences have translated well into Another Language, especially here, where atmosphere and tranquility trump the need to explore, if at least for a little while longer.

The final third is welcomed triumphantly with Alex Bhore’s hypnotic drum loops and Donovan Jones’ composed keys in “Invitation” as we continue our odyssey of this level of the afterlife. Trust is regained and we are energized for the remaining leg of the journey. “Memory Loss”, which sounds like a remnant of the hazy grey canyons we left behind in Tunnel Blanket, scores the final determined drive into the unknown, with Bhore’s bright crashing symbols and Jeremy Galindo’s heaving guitar to lead the march. Mountains are formed as the sky above turns bright orange-red and gradually gives way to our first twilight. The sampling of Sounds of American Doomsday Cults Vol. 14 at the end of “Memory Loss” (which should sound familiar to those who enjoyed The Body‘s 2010 terrifying sludge masterwork All The Waters of The Earth Turn To Blood) lead us into the final and most tranquil track, “God’s Teeth” in which spinning and newly formed galaxies are clearly traced in the unpolluted night sky. Lest we miss that very moment on the album, though, from the cultish chants at the end of “Memory Loss” to the white noise that abruptly wipes clean the star bright chorus of “God’s Teeth”, as it reinstates that despite the beauty and extensive paradise This Will Destroy You have presented before us with this complex and brilliant work, therein still lies uncertainty.