Rangda - The Heretic's Bargain (2016)

Rangda! They planted a False Flag in the blood-soaked turf of the contemporary rock-politik. They were Formerly Extinct before you ever even THOUGHT about giving it up for good! Now, five years since ascending to collective Rangdadom, the flower-plower trio are back in your phase! This time around, Rangda strikes The Heretic's Bargain for you - but have a care, foolish listener; not only is it an offer you can't refuse, this here's a deal you can't repeal! Ever since the trio of Sir Richard Bishop, Ben Chasny and Chris Corsano banded together, the supergroup moniker has stuck in Rangda's collective craw. We only meant: gee, what a super group! It's boss stuff, kids! But whatever, and what's done is done - The Heretic's Bargain takes a nail gun to that idea's coffin and buries it ALIVE, firmly reinforcing Rangda as a band with a shared intuition, instead of the sum of three separate (though insanely great) parts. After years of recording and touring together, Bishop and Chasny's guitar playing has mutated via some kind of lateral gene transfer of their musical DNA, and the rhythms ridden by Rangda feel mutually funded (though Corsano's beat-making is as fine-lined and rawly inspired as ever). The Heretic's Bargain takes territories that Rangda explored on their first two albums - the abraded fury and free forms off False Flag and the serpentine Rang-dang-doodle songatechture from Formerly Extinct - and evolves them further into a grand unified I-know-I-don't-know-what-it-is(but-I-like-it) development in music.