For those of you who have experienced snow, and lots of it, allow me to paint a picture: When I was a kid, I can vividly remember burying myself underneath snow in the middle of winter. Within that oddly chilly yet warm space, an insular calm emerged wherein one became completely aware of everything around them and yet aware of precisely nothing at the same time. The best explanation I can think of is that burying yourself in snow is an exercise in sensory deprivation and is something that stays with a person, a feeling of dead calm, dread calm, and full cosmic understanding so far as it goes. TRANSMISSION0 have come to you now as an adult sized coffin of snow and ice. Drift away into memory, kids.

Borrowing equally from other ethereal travelers like BURST and of course NEUROSIS, TRANSMISSION0 inhabit the ether in a purgatorial stasis. The sounds they create are not wholly Metal, but are also not accessible. They're like seeing an advertisement for a Big Mac when you haven't eaten all day: You want it, can almost taste it, but yet the satisfaction is elusive. Someplace within the twisted wreckage of damaged thought that makes up "Memory Of A Dream", there is cohesion; there are battered cells, stitched up wounds, and residual stiffness, but cohesion nonetheless. Each composition has an ebb and flow that threatens to suck you under its waves of black while simultaneously lifting you above the stratosphere of ambiance, which is really difficult to achieve. The stomach sinks into the ankles, the heart repositions itself, and all you can feel is anxiousness, waiting for the next progression, yearning for the movement that will either extol you or punish your senses mercilessly.

By the time "Paracas" is completed, well, just forget it. Paralysis occurs by the sheer weight of the riffs, the entire suite of the album becoming a daunting landscape before you, laid out by some unseen force. And then the insulation begins, the title "Cocoon" finally making sense, shoulder blades aching like wings are about to sprout. Make no mistake, this is not an album for your Grind head friends to marvel at. This album needs to be played in art houses, dissected at the highest levels of Metal academia, and digested by absolutely nobody. TRANSMISSION0 have managed to craft an album that is surreal, beautiful, ethereal, and ultimately damaging. The scorch of its fire will rest within your heart for quite some time, and the memory of this particular dream is something you may be unable to shake. And that, friends, is what makes a good album - the times you try to forget are the times when the meaning, the true heart and soul of this music shine through. We need this noise, in all its forms. If only this album didn't feel like bugs crawling all over every inch of your body...