Any new release from 夢遊病者 (again, loosely translated to Sleepwalker) is cause for celebration, simply because at this point in the band’s career you have no idea what you’re going to get. Is it going to be the frenzied noise expedition on earlier albums like 5772 or 一​期​一​会? Perhaps the more ambient (though no less harrowing) and enveloping grace of last year’s Skopofoboexoskelett? The answer is, of course, “none of the above”. Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum is a sprawling, global-encompassing exploration of various genres and styles that attempt to channel the whole of human experience into an album both heart-breakingly lovely and crushing in its accusation. Multiple listens yield new secrets and interpretations, and like all of the band’s previous work it lingers long after the air is silent.

Much like the human experience, things are never done in a vacuum, and so Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum finds 夢遊病者 working with a myriad of musicians across the planet, folding in more elements of world music, jazz and modern classical than ever before. But it’s the vocals that hit me first. They’ve always been there, usually buried in the mix or used more expressively as a part of the sonic tapestry the band weaves, but here they are up front and present like never before. In between the suffocating space of opener “Tongue Arc Orion” you can hear gasps and breathing, warming up to glorious harmonized clean vocals courtesy of guest Ø.Hægeland who fronted one of my all-time favorite technical death metal bands, Spiral Architect. Using vocals this way is a tactic unexplored before now from 夢遊病者, and as it blends into some gorgeous melancholic doom and eastern-flavored melodies it becomes positively sumptuous.

A lot of that comes from the instrumentation, as Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum features a wonderful cross-section of sounds, including cello, oboe, french horn, and even lap steel. It builds to these incredible moments of music that hook you deeper than anything that’s come before. The massive bass that opens “Jupiterian Convulse Tremor” explodes with menace and aggression, but doesn’t stop the track from seamlessly incorporating accordion into its passages in a way that is simultaneously eye-widening in surprise and perfectly natural sounding, as it “of course accordion needs to go next to this punishing maelstrom of metal!” I love the ethereal way “Telepath Transport Wing” opens only to seconds later hearken back to the avant-garde noise excursions that made the band’s bones almost a decade earlier. But then it again opens up, and you can drift for days listening to how they use emptiness and space to accentuate passages, their arrangements always exciting, never rote or remotely predictable.

By the time of closer “Aurum Iris Loop” where the band turns in one of their most accessible “metal” songs to date, I’m left again with the sense of 夢遊病者as true sonic explorers, drinking deep from the global history of music as art and refusing to be confined to something as silly as “genre”. When people talk about music as an “experience” this is what I envision, something to drink deep, to lose yourself in its universal wandering, and find pieces of yourself in its reflections. Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum is for me the band’s best release to date, looking in all directions at once and finding new avenues of expression that continue to amaze, surprise, and challenge.