Extreme to graceful, raging to soothing, thorns to silk. This shit is intense. Azusa successfully pull off the rarest of feats: they swing the pendulum from heavy to light without turning into an impenetrable avant-garde mess. I know there’s a vast community for the different degrees of intensity. At most times, it’s like Bob Ross and Hannibal Lecter are both wrestling for the control booth. Azusa leap nimbly from raw-voiced Jinjer screams to My Bloody Valentine ethereality.

Eleni Zafiriadou is truly amazing at the forefront, but credit can be dispersed liberally throughout the band - - bassist Liam Wilson,
guitarist Christer Espevoll (Extol), and drummer David Husvik (Extol).- - for pulling this off. It’s a daring experiment, and to be blunt, I would have predicted failure, if I hadn’t witnessed its success with my own ears.
Azusa are referred to as a supergroup, because Eleni’s primary group is the lovely, gentle Indie-Folk duo Sea + Air, Liam is from Dillinger Escape Plan, and Christer and David hail from Extol. “Loop of Yesterdays” is their second release, so it gives me hope that this is not just a flukey side project for the members involved. The brutality and the strangeness of this experiment - - the blinding wattage of the screamy vocal sections - - mean that this is not for everyone. No two ways about it, it’s often difficult to listen to, but it’s also fascinating in the right ways, and compelling in the right ways. Horrifying and joyous, all blended into one.
Check out “Detach” (featuring a guitar solo from Alex Skolnick of Testament), “the title track, “Skull Chamber,” and the twangy pitchy chords of “Seven Demons Mary.”