These guys are getting a lot of Hall of Fame (figuratively) talk lately, critics heaping praise on this album as some weird, indirect lifetime achievement award.
Some of the good word is deserved - this takes post-rock to the next level, huge like Explosions and Godspeed, but eschewing narrative buildups in favor of exhaustive minimalist exploration. The interest doesn't come from smearing rock to the horizons, it comes stretching a small piece of rock to fraying, watching the tendons pop, glistening the darkness. Nothing climaxes, everything breathes and rolls over like a bloody moon and breathes and breathes and breathes and then stops. This is beyond time and place, rooms erected inside of ideas, abstract figures on a ground of terrifying unknown, lorded over by a frontman sounding alternately creepy like Tom Waits and creepy like Liars' Angus Andrew. It might be one of the most deeply, fundamentally Lovecraftian album ever made. If David Lynch ever wants to come back and come back dark, he knows who to call for the soundtrack. It's dark and strange, is the theme here.
Most of my praise is conceptual though, the actual listen can be tedious, and sometimes the curtain of the eternal falls and all the repetitions feel like good old fashioned rock indulgence - by the halfway mark of the meandering Kirsten Supine you start getting that old "this could have been a single disc" feeling. What's that Michael? You will/will/can't/can't/will/will/can't/can't/won't/won't/will/will/can't/won't/will/can't/will/won't/will/can't* let it go? Tell me more.
I'll say this, the vaguely adventurous rock fan should definitely listen to it once, all the way through, and expect to say "wow. well, now I've heard that" and never put it on again 3.5/5
* this is not me being a dick. this is the literal list of updates we get on where dude stands vis a vis letting it go
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