Review: Carian – Carian
Style: Progressive Metal, Post Metal, Black Metal, Shoegaze (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Cloudkicker, Deafheaven, Explosions in the Sky
Country: USA (Utah)
Release date: 1 July 2026
The 2016 episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia “Dee Made a Smut Film” sees Danny Devito’s character, Frank Reynolds, post as an art collector who bursts into a gallery and declares piece after piece “Bullshit!”, “Bull… shit!”, “Derivative!”, before pointing at a dehumidifier sitting in the middle of the room and declaring “That–I love!”. While the scene pokes fun at the pomposity of the fine art world (with a nod to the inherent subjectivity of art criticism), what does Frank mean when he says a work is “derivative”?
“Derivative art is artwork that heavily imitates another artist’s style, subject matter, composition, or creative choices, often to the point where the original creator’s voice overshadows the new work.” – artiststrong.com
With that in mind, check out the latest Carian:
If you thought you were listening to new Cloudkicker, I wouldn’t blame you. A few of us at the Subway immediately made this connection. The humming, layered guitars, the pummelling drums, the dynamic ebb and flow of delicate post-rock sections followed by double-bass pedal Deafheaven-inspired blackgaze ones – it’s so imitative of Beacons it almost sounds like it could be off-cuts and leftovers of that album. But no, this is not cutting-room floor debris, it’s the new self-titled, full-length, single-track LP from Carian.
Although nominally a single track, Carian features nine to eleven “movements” tethered to each other either by silence or by minimal atmospheric thread. These movements have no recurring motifs or reprises, as far as this author can tell, and so could be treated entirely as separate tracks. Why they weren’t is anyone’s guess. This lack of a thematic throughline is disappointing. However, while Carian lacks compositional continuity, its stylistic consistency is rock-solid.1 It’s just regrettable that that style so clearly apes Beacons.2
Where Carian does depart from the style of Beacons, it moves in directions that detract, rather than complement, that style. Carian opts out of the forward-mixed, crystal clear, high-pitched guitar hooks of Beacons, choosing instead to use Explosions in the Sky-style layered guitar tracks. While EitS weave these layers in and out, back and forth, Carian has them limply lying atop of each other. Multiple tracks, played in the same key, but not interacting with each other or echoing each other in any way definitely provides some modicum of depth, but it’s less of a Mariana Trench, and more of a “shallow section in the wading pool”. It’s not nothing, but it’s not much of anything, either. The fully-acoustic outro track(s) provide some dynamic range, but also feel like an afterthought. – the duck bill on this platypus of an album.
Carian is the perfect LP for anyone who wishes that Beacons were about ten tracks longer, but doesn’t mind if those ten additional tracks aren’t as good as anything else on the album. Stylistically, it’s spot on: if you’re a fan of heavy post-rock and shoegaze, or softer blackgaze a la Sunbather, you might enjoy the vibe of this album, but don’t expect to enjoy it for any other reason. Where it succeeds in atmosphere-building, it fails in originality, composition, and memorability. A disappointing, derivative disaster.
Recommended tracks: “Track 2” (~2:03-6:05), “Track 5” (~12:44-17:25)
You may also like: Scale the Summit, Pelican
Final verdict: 3/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Instagram
Label: independent
Carian is:
– Randall William Cordner (everything)
- Especially noticeable is the godawful snare tone on this album. It sounds like someone slapping a plastic cutting board against a wall in an empty room. You cannot unhear it once it makes itself known. ↩︎
- Even the black-and-white album art of Carian echoes Beacons. It’s derivative on multiple levels. ↩︎
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