Named after the tendency to impose familiar likenesses, such as faces, on random - usually inanimate - objects, Pareidolia is Jake Muir's way of interpreting the consonances between so-called “ambient” music and extreme heavy metal. Extracting the headiest, most atmospheric sections from hundreds of death metal and black metal tracks, Muir plays the role of both DJ and electroacoustic composer, concocting a lysergic elixir of fractal distortions and prolonged, decelerated riffs that slowly evaporates into iridescent vapor. If there's any trace of the original sources left, Muir makes sure that residue is subtly bewildering, like clouds in the sky that form imposing, larger than life images, or trampled bracken that falls into the shape of “trve kvlt” insignia.

The idea for the album materialized when Muir was working on 2022's Talisman, his collaborative album with multi-instrumentalist Evan Caminiti. Processing guitar for the first time, Muir began to unpack his long relationship with rock music and its Escher-like maze of sub-genres, from the tech metal he obsessed over as a teenager to Loop and Main's drone-y, textured variants. Scraping the internet for unconventional contemporary metal albums, he stumbled across music that seemed to hover between different realms, merging its frenetic, noisy sections with psychedelic interludes that harmonize with classic industrial and avant-garde music, material like :zoviet*france:, Nocturnal Emissions and Z'EV.

Muir fixates on this semi-permeable membrane on Pareidolia, infusing his pitch-skewed weightless drones with gravel and aerating his archive of rasping samples with a sense of euphoria that might seem contradictory at first. Evocative creaks and rainfall sounds create layers of noise around a staccato pluck on Oblivion and Muir's theme begins to crystallize. The inherent rhythm forms a slow, ritualistic thump and the additional sounds - celestial wails and goosebump-inducing harmonic rattles - form an imposing, painterly backdrop. On Each Uisge meanwhile, the high pitched guitar sounds cascade over gorgeous choral pads, while dissociated vocal pops and cracks vanish into the darkness.

Pareidolia is an album that plays like an optical illusion: Unholy Apparitions transforms bone-rattling foley sounds and unnerving groans into woozy, psychedelic textures and Anima steams doomy riffs and haunted clanks until they float like the erotic soundscapes that curled through Muir's breakout Bathhouse Blues. It's an act of sonic sleight of hand that feels fittingly disorienting. Heavy doesn't need to be deafening.