For more than a decade, Scattered Purgatory (破地獄) has existed in a self-made border zone: not quite drone or folk and not quite kosmiche rock. instead they’ve been something ritualistic and weathered that’s risen directly out of Taipei’s concrete heat and spiritual density. Post Purgatory, arriving after a pandemic-induced three-year silence, is a reckoning with time, erosion, and survival. Something entirely personal and artistic.
Looking back at early landmarks like Lost Ethnography of the Miscanthus Ocean and God of Silver Grass, Scattered Purgatory once felt obsessed with place as sound: long, humid drones, improvisational guitar lines drifting like incense smoke, and a patience that resisted narrative in favor of immersion. Those records carried the sensation of wandering—sonic field recordings of emotional and geographic landscapes. On Post Purgatory, the wandering stops. The band sounds rooted, even confrontational, as if standing still long enough to let loss catch up.
The album’s title signals transition, but the music resists catharsis. Opening track “Atata Naraka” (one of the album’s most quietly devastating moments, incidentally), the group immediately establishes a new clarity: beats snap into focus, low-end pulses throb with a trip-hop patience, and the once-amorphous drones are now sculpted with intention. The production is split between home recording and the same studio where their debut was born, and mirrors the album’s emotional split between past and present. Digital precision and more holistic homemade capture blend seamlessly without sterilising the music.
Language plays a crucial role. Lyrics drift between Taiwanese, Mandarin, and English, not as a stylistic flourish but as a lived reality of Taipei life. On “Ephemeral Mind”, the multilingual delivery feels almost percussive, cutting through doom-laden electronics with fragile humanity. There’s no linear narrative across the album; however, the recurring metaphors of fire, water, ruins, and time all act as emotional anchors. Time in particular is used as both healer and destroyer here, and nowhere is that tension clearer than on “Moonquake”, where glacial synth lines clash against White Wu’s restless, almost jazz-inflected drumming.
The expanded lineup matters. Minyen Hsieh’s tenor saxophone enters “Wunai” like a voice from another era, recalling late-period kosmische jazz while grounding the track in grief. Meanwhile, Dotzio’s sci-fi-tinged vocals on “Moonquake” pull the band toward something eerily futuristic, reframing doom metal not as weight but as atmosphere. These collaborations refract Scattered Purgatory’s identity showing how porous their sound has become.
That said, Post Purgatory isn’t flawless. With the emotional density stretched across long track runtimes, a few passages linger more than they need to. “Ocean City, Mirage Tower”, while conceptually aligned with the theme of suspended time, risks testing the listener’s patience with repetition that lacks the hypnotic payoff of earlier works. It’s the rare moment where intention outweighs impact.
Still, the album’s emotional gravity is undeniable. Influences of Hokkien and Mando pop subtly surface in melodic phrasing, offering moments of warmth amid the gloom, while electronic textures keep the record from slipping into nostalgia. This is a band acknowledging the damage of the past and choosing forward motion. Post Purgatory reframes Scattered Purgatory as a doom metal band shaped by electronic and cultural hybridity rather than genre orthodoxy, but more importantly, the album feels like artists taking stock. They’re less mystified by abstraction, more willing to speak plainly through sound, and in doing so, it may be their most human record yet.
7/10
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