Following up a classic is always difficult. Especially when that classic was 12 years in the making. Thus was the task at hand for Luc Lemay and trying to follow up 2013s Colored Sands, arguably one of the most successful death metal comebacks of all time. But Lemay has played it smart; he waited a while, and instead of a full album burdened with expectations, has has dropped a 1 song 33 minute EP of sorts, thematically rooted in fall of the Roman empire and the rise and fall of the “House of Wisdom”, a library of sorts that was a cultural and historical center of enlightenment and knowledge in the middle east that would birth Baghdad.

And while the deep concept is certainly the root of the release, the music that surrounds it, is equally as deep. The 33 minute opus is broken up (though you can hardly tell with simply listening, the CD booklet helps somewhat) into 7 ‘movements’; I. Thinkers Slumber, II. Wandering Times, III. Within the Rounded Walls, IV. Pearls of Translation, V. Compendiums, VI. Stranded Minds on the Shores of Doubt, and VII. Besieged.

I’ve never been one for long tracks or single track albums (curse you Crimson !!!!!!), but at 33 minutes and full of the same crumbling, discordant majesty as Colored Sands, Pleiades’ Dust is an exception to the rule. Parts are hard to single out, and the movements seem to ebb and flow between monolithic expulsions of otherworldly dissonant chaos (14;40, 26:26) and more introspective, mystical segues.  As with the last album, this isn’t a release you put on and go to a song or moment, but rather let the conceptual and musical genius of Lemay and his (slightly different from Colored Sands) cohorts Colin Marston, Kevin Hufnagel and Patrice Hamelin pull you into the sonic sandstorm and get lost in it. The swirling, shifting chaos is like dunes, sometime clam and serene, sometimes neverending and destructive.

Lemay is clearly a genius both musically, conceptually and as a business man and clearly would have been at home at the House of Wisdom. And while we didn’t have to wait a full 12 years for new Gorguts music, this tasty place holder certainly shows Lemay is as focused and driven as he was 15 years ago for Obscura and once again has a hand in defining death metal almost 20 years later.

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