Beyond The Sleepless Aether by Symbiotic Growth will tear your fucking face off.
Well… more like slowly peel it off with a blunt butter knife while squeezing lemon juice into your raw wounds, as there isn’t a single track on offer that is less than seven minutes long, but damn my eyes if you won’t enjoy every single last second of the agonisingly exquisite pain, because Beyond The Sleepless Aether by Symbiotic Growth is the best album of 2025 by a country fucking mile.
The follow up to the bands self-titled debut, Beyond The Sleepless Aether is, according to Aaron Barriault;
“…a bit darker and experimental, with more synth-heavy sounds and a melancholy atmosphere. The lyrics were very loosely inspired by a dream I had about the multiverse theory intertwined with some of my challenges of dealing with a sense of being and why we are all here.”
While also adding;
“I think the fans who have heard our previous album may be a bit surprised; the sound of this album is a bit different; it’s a little bit more experimental in its own way. Either way, we hope that fans enjoy what we’ve created. I feel like the listener may have feelings of uneasiness and wonder. An odd combination, but I feel like it’s fitting.”
And that’s where I could stick a fork in this review and be done, truth be told, because Beyond The Sleepless Aether delivers on everything that Aaron Barriault said it would.
It is darker than a cave full of bats buried a thousand feet underground. It is as uneasy to listen to as your parents having sex in the room next door when they’re 90, and it is as melancholy as Eeyore off his fucking meds.
It is so fucking out there at times, with progressive time changes and chord structures that boggle the mind, that you find yourself wondering if this is what Pink Floyd and Yes would’ve sounded like if they’d grown up in the late 80s listening to Mayhem, but at its center, Beyond The Sleepless Aether is heavy as a herd of elephants wearing armour, jumping up and down on your head for the rest of time.
It is utterly relentless, yet interspersed with moments of such musical beauty that your soul will ache to the point of breaking.
I cannot praise this album highly enough as it is fucking perfect in every single way, and if you have ever taken anything I have ever written to heart then know this. You… yes, you reading this… you need this fucking album in your life in the way that you need breathing
Beyond The Sleepless Aether by Symbiotic Growth is available to stream right now via Spotify, Bandcamp, and YouTube. So go fucking do it.
RATING: 5 OUT OF 5
Press Source: ASHER MEDIA RELATIONS. Jon Asher – Music Publicist. Facebook @AsherMediaRelations. Instagram @AsherMedia. Tweet @AsherMedia
