There’s a moment early in Anabasis where everything feels like it might come apart, rhythm splintering, guitars grinding against the beat, tension stretching to a near-breaking point. And then it locks in. Not comfortably, not cleanly, but with purpose. That push and pull defines the latest from Echo Bloom, a record that trades polish for something far more unsettling: honesty.
Ahead of the album’s May 1 release, the band has begun sketching out its visual and emotional terrain as well, unveiling the video for “Bleeding Into Gold,” a centerpiece track that mirrors the record’s volatile core. Like the song itself, the visual leans into tension and release, framing grief not as something resolved, but as something in motion—transformed, but never fully settled.
The Brooklyn-based band’s newest release marks a decisive pivot. Where earlier work hinted at eclecticism, Anabasis commits fully, embracing abrasion, repetition, and emotional volatility. The result is an album that feels less like a collection of songs and more like a constructed environment — something architectural, even oppressive at times, but never static.
Lead singles like “Reborn” and “Bleeding Into Gold” serve as entry points into this world, though neither offers an easy way in. “Bleeding Into Gold,” in particular, captures the album’s core tension: grief sharpened into movement. The track pulses forward with a nervous energy, oscillating between restraint and release, as if catharsis is always just out of reach. When it finally arrives, it feels earned — but also fleeting.
Echo Bloom’s sonic palette is as ambitious as their conceptual framing suggests. You can hear echoes of Os Mutantes in the band’s willingness to let chaos breathe, while the rhythmic insistence owes a clear debt to Fela Kuti’s hypnotic repetition. Elsewhere, the mechanical precision of Kraftwerk surfaces in the album’s skeletal structures, only to be torn apart by bursts of distortion that recall Nine Inch Nails at their most unrelenting.
But these aren’t mere reference points — they’re raw materials. Anabasis doesn’t imitate so much as collide its influences, building something that feels deliberately unstable. Songs stretch and contract unpredictably, grooves emerge only to dissolve, and melodies often take a backseat to texture and momentum.
At the center of it all is loss. Principal songwriter Kyle Evans began shaping the album in the aftermath of a personal tragedy, and that sense of disorientation permeates the record. There’s no neat resolution here — no clean arc from grief to acceptance. Instead, Anabasis documents the messier reality: shock hardening into fixation, anger morphing into propulsion. If there’s transcendence, it comes not from closure, but from motion.
That idea reaches its clearest expression in the album’s recurring fixation on rhythm as ritual. Drums don’t just keep time; they drive the record forward like a force of nature. Tracks often feel less like songs and more like ceremonies, built on repetition and escalation. It’s here that Echo Bloom’s vision clicks most powerfully — when the intellectual framework falls away and the body takes over.
Still, Anabasis isn’t an easy listen. Its refusal to soften edges or offer clear entry points can feel alienating, especially on first pass. But that friction is part of its design. This is a record that demands attention, even patience, rewarding listeners willing to sit with its discomfort.
With Anabasis, Echo Bloom have created something uncompromising—a record that resists categorization while fully committing to its own internal logic. It may not convert the uninitiated overnight, but for those willing to engage on its terms, it offers a striking and often powerful experience.
In a musical landscape that often favors immediacy and accessibility, Anabasis stands apart. It doesn’t ask to be liked. It asks to be felt.
For more information, check out their website here.
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