The sun is appropriately some 93 million miles away from the Earth and we like keeping it that far from us. It's important that, while varying constantly with orbits and everything, that we keep it far enough away from us. 93 million miles feels just right. 92 million, while still a goodly amount away, is a full million miles closer and it delivers quite a hit to our comfort level. Or maybe that's just me talking, getting all nervouse about the possibility and shit. Either way, let's just keep the sun where it currently is, for everyone's sake. When you start listening to the latest Liturgy record, "Aesthethica," you get the sense that something is disturbing our comfort level like it's never been disturbed before. The sun, just minutes ago, was where it belonged and we were sufficiently heated or kept at an optimum temperature - not being melted or frozen to death. Suddenly, with the first chugging parts of Greg Fox's drums and the wash of fervent black metal guitar, we're petrified to watch as the sun comes barreling right at us, growing larger and larger, hotter and hotter, as it comes to get us all. It's similar to the terrifying scene that we'd witness if - for all these years - the sun had just been drifting away from us, on the end of a rubber band - and it finally got to the end of its elasticity. Back it comes with an accelerated force and we're all just sitting ducks.
Liturgy gives us an impending feeling, but even with the obliteration of all creation looming, the Brooklyn-based band doesn't bring out the kind of pandemonium in us that we'd expect to feel if we knew that everything were coming to a long end in a short amount of time. The band and its music are punishing, but only so much. Hunter Hunt-Hendrix is called the group's "vocalist," but that's just because there's no other word that can describe what he does with the sounds that come out of his mouth when they're playing. The are the sounds that come when you're getting a surprise pinch, one that doesn't let go for a good 3-4 seconds. It's the sound of a dog getting the tip of its tail run over - a shocked yip. It's pure voltage that doesn't dribble out of him, put comes out like the pressure and gush from a fire hose.
The band - completed by guitarist Bernard Gann and bassist Tyler Dusenbury - makes you want to take a road trip to the closest border state, where you can then purchase all of the colorful explosives that are illegal where you live and then just set them off in one humongous grand finale. You want to take them and aim them straight and the hurtling sun. You might just be able to lay the fuses out on the ground and with the increasingly intense heat coming from the sun breathing down on us, they'd just spark off on their own, the rockets flying around haphazard, blowing off people's fingers, ears and even some faces. We want to be there to see all this. We kinda, sorta are already.