Rhododendron : Ascent Effort
Even if you are so far removed from a band’s place of origin, when they manage to convey its very essence through sound, it’s truly transportive. More so if you also happen to live in a place that mirrors how the Pacific Northwest regularly covers any glimmer of sun in a gloom-shroud (it’s a slog indeed). That’s the powerful effect of Rhododendron, an outfit that sweeps over the beauty of their namesake plants with a greying darkness; like the malice running under the soil of the region’s captivating Douglas Firs.
Or, as dubbed in a 2024 recorded set, they could be considered“post-apocalyptic campfire music for woodland giants”. It’s not inaccurate, where the trio are a direct sum of their influential parts. In the same performance they rep Miles Davis, nightmarish Japanese experimental outfit Grim and Careen—another example of Northwest noisy band lineage that has clearly guided Ezra Chong, Gage Walker and Noah Mortola since their days at School of Rock. Better still, blackened avant-garde jazz freakouts are only a few things that scream to mind from their debut’s sleeve; Protozoan Battle Hymns (made in their mid-to-late teens, somehow) is covered in Dali eyeballs, a NYHC graffiti logo font and mythical creatures riding normal ones.
It is a rough-and-ready mix to take in for sure, where Ascent Effort now sees them finding more of an assured footing. Three longer suites chopped up by two short(er) tracks manage to nail building tension and swooping destruction, time and time again. And with a more foggy atmosphere favored over their crust-tinged past record, it’s a wonderful, consuming beast.
The rise-and-fall-and-rise songwriting approach suits them well. Where past 15-minute epic “Garden of Earthly Delights” shared the whole kitchen sink approach as the XTC song of the same name, “Firmament” is a more concise, well-threaded triptych; a flowing pool of math-rock noodling, swirling bass lines and Mortola’s jazz training all across an eight-minute blast that never feels its runtime. “Stow” similarly brings calm sparsity between the wreckage to elevate its contrasting dynamic moods. Every rhythmic shift feels unexpected, and Chong’s lo-fi screeched vocals (as on “Like Spitting Out Copper”) return to split open the enveloping instrumentals, just when it feels right to. On the subject of enveloping tones, what about that growling bass effect Walker uses to scare headphone users for all of its final couple of minutes?
Whether frenzied or molasses-slow heaviness is the preferred option for listeners, Rhododendron offers both. “Family Photo” has a breathless mid-section of punctuated hi-hats that sits neatly before “Within Crippling Light,” a sparse climb that eventually spills everything in a chilling ice-blast of doom, ending proceedings with gleeful dirge. The entire listen is, aptly, an Ascent Effort: an adventurous moor-side voyage that snaps you around the chops so ferociously that it’s tough to keep up with at first. Still, it creates an urge to rediscover the meticulous details as soon as it lets out its last breath, and given this promising early-career demonstration from such a young crew, it’s scary to think what they might unleash on us next.
Label: Flenser
Year: 2026
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