In Vilayer, New Zealand’s Keretta have crafted a heavy, soupy album that drowns the listener in riffs that would crush the sturdiest of submarines. Forsaking the lyrics, often the weakest element of stoner or doom rock, this three-piece has focused on the best elements, creating a soundscape that is at turns nearly so abstract as to be at times ambient to the point of passivity and at others so intense you’ll call for emergency services to help scoop your brains back into your head.

One of the hardest things for instrumental music to do is initiate and maintain an air of intimacy with the audience. Evolution has taught us to respond to the human voice. It provides an immediate and subconscious hook that creates a primal dialogue with the audience as the listener attempts to understand what the singer is communicating. Even the distorted vocal qualities of something akin to death metal provokes an immediate response, even if that response is just a rejection of that which you’re hearing as you recoil from the unnatural full-throated roar of the singer.

Vilayer‘s music, though entirely instrumental, does not have that problem. From the first song, “Sleepers” sneaks in quietly with a simple guitar drone and drum pattern starting as quietly as you like before like a dreamer slipping into deeper and deeper cycles of sleep the patterns change as new riffs emerge from what came before, like recurrent dreams. An overriding offbeat squeal rises and then mutates as the song goes on. The intensity increases. The song in the final seconds then calls back to the original sounds. Abruptly, like waking from a nightmare, the song ends.

As the album continues, Keretta pulls songs apart to their extremes to test the sturdiness of their creations and it’s at these extremes that the album falls apart. Rather than feeling epic, songs like the ten minute “Bone Amber Reigns” or seven minute “White Lie” feel more out of control as though the band were wowed more with the noises they could make using effects pedals. These missteps are few though and it’s encouraging to see the band at least try to tackle the extra space afforded to them on their first album.

Keretta has used the expanse of the album format to really push their sound forward. Vilayer is bold in how it marries indie rock and post-rock stylings providing a unique and accessible point of entry for neophytes into what can be an incomprehensible genre for outsiders.