Over the last decade, Chicago quartet REZN have carved out a unique place in the landscape of heavy music, chiseling away at the crude formations of the topography, mining the most concentrated metallic ore from the dirt, and shaping it all into something monumental, imposing, and divine. While REZN has always fused seismic riffs with effortless beauty and grandeur, their shifting strategies for wielding that polarity have involved varied compositional and stylistic decisions, most notably the light-and-dark contrast of companion albums Solace (2023) and Burden (2024). But with their newest full-length offering, Cycles in the Infinite Dream, REZN masterfully harness the oppressive weight of their full sonic armory to celestial melodies and sublime synesthesia-inducing atmospherics in a manner so seamless it feels otherworldly, as if occupying a liminal space between two realities.
While REZN traffic in the unbridled realms of metal and untethered reaches of psychedelia, their latest release showcases a band working with discipline and intention, even when those intentions are rendered to be purposefully cryptic. As the album title implies, Cycles in the Infinite Dream explores the nexus of our waking and nocturnal worlds. “We moved towards the dream and subconscious state as a lyrical concept and melodic theme,” the band explains. “The pseudo-waking state is a reflection of a second existence—something that you can flee to or be imprisoned by.” Much like the subconscious-guided work of David Lynch, Cycles in the Infinite Dream exists as parallax between the artist and the audience, creating an obscured and distorted space that is both familiar and alien, like a corridor into our past where we recognize our surroundings but somehow still feel lost within its warped geometry.
REZN have long operated—and thrived—in the subterranean realm of music heads who crave the aural equivalent of altered states. And with Cycles in the Infinite Dream, they have created their most psychotropic work to date.
- Written by Brian Cook
