8/10

Estonian quartet Kaschalot return with 'Anemoia', their third studio album that hums with emotional weight and sonic dexterity, folding time signatures into heartbeats and shaping silence as deliberately as sound. It’s their most focused and fluid work to date, a math-rock voyage that avoids genre tropes in favour of something more alive and visceral.

Across eight blistering compositions, 'Anemoia' explores the process of change. You feel it in the swell and decay of each track, in the delicate eccentricity of their interlocking guitars, and the percussive surges that never settle where you think they will. It’s a record that moves forward with purpose, but often glances backward, searching for answers in ghostly reverb and restrained crescendos.

Where their previous releases hinted at ambition, 'Anemoia' delivers with absolute confidence. The arrangements are tighter, the textures more refined. The guitars speak in tandem, weaving counterpoints and harmonics like a conversation between themselves. The rhythm section pulses like muscle memory, complex but never convoluted.

For a band with no vocals, 'Anemoia' speaks volumes. It’s a collection told in frequencies, with moments of tension, release, and the kind of reflection that feels personal even when it’s abstract. Kaschalot have crafted something quietly monumental, an album that continues to cement themselves as torchbearers in their chosen genre.