To quote Arte Johnson: “Very interesting…”

Into the Storm is a four-piece ensemble from Bellingham, Washington. The previous sentence lacks any stylistic adjectives because it’s tough to slap a label on a band that draws on post-rock, death metal, screamo, noise and post-hardcore. And Across These Deserted Plains brushes through each of those genres on the way to solidifying its sound come album close.

“Open Skies, Dark Sunsets” crawls off the starting line with a fistful of manipulated feedback after a fairly utilitarian clean electric guitar intro before fading into the second track, “People Come in Flocks,” which explodes into grindy chaos shortly past the one-minute mark. The first two tracks seem to be the exception, though, when it comes to Into the Storm’s primary style, since that appears to be some `mid-90s emo / early `00s post-hardcore that occasionally dips into Stza Crack-styled screams and at least once nearly into the creepy subliminal message style vocals of the intro to Choking Victim’s “Hate Yer State.” So yeah…very interesting…

The band finally hits their stride on the last track, “Sleeping Through the Thunder.” Though bordering on the long side at 5:26, the song displays the most impassioned vocal delivery on the disc, with wall-of-sound distortion between periods of calm that demonstrate the flexibility ITS seem to be going for on the disc as a whole.

While suffering just a tad from amateur-leveled production, And Across These Deserted Plains shows a band capable of bigger things. With maintained creative vision in an interesting blend styles that seem to only be growing in popularity, Into the Storm may have the opportunity to reach an even larger audience in the future.