Presenting ROSSIYA from CASCADES, a swirling post-metal epic which brings to mind the grind of tectonic plates, and the melting polar ice caps.
Art As Catharsis is proud to announce CASCADES’ bleak, post-metal epic ‘ROSSIYA’, is out now for ‘Name Your Price’ on Bandcamp.
“The perfect mix of haunting atmospheres, devastating heaviness and melancholic swathes.” – Echoes and Dust
CASCADES write:
The polar ice cap at the Arctic is melting. Retreating ice is beginning to expose deposits of rare-earth metals used in the production of smartphones and military guidance systems. Resource exploration and oil and gas drilling is becoming easier, in an area thought to contain around 22% of the world’s total oil and gas reserves.
Climate change in the Arctic will have drastic follow-on effects on climate and weather patterns worldwide. Melting ice caps are expected to reduce rainfall in many parts of the world, leading to desertification, an inability to sustain agriculture, a rise in worldwide sea levels, competition for resources and food, and many other major consequences.
In 2007, the nuclear icebreaker Rossiya (Russia) led the Academik Fedorov research ship containing two submersibles, two Mi-8 helicopters and two Ilyushin II-18 aircraft on an expedition to the North Pole.
Once at an area called the Lomosonov Ridge, an 1,800 kilometre-long underwater geological formation, it sent its two submersibles to the sea bed, roughly 4,000 metres below the sea surface, where, in a territorial claim, it planted a titanium Russian flag.
Russia’s claim to the territory was thought to be motivated by the area’s oil, gas, and mineral resources. President of Russia Vladimir Putin said Russia urgently needed to secure its “strategic, economic, scientific and defence interests” in the Arctic.
Other countries, including the US, Canada and Denmark have made competing claims, thought to be driven by commercial interest in new shipping lanes opened by melting polar ice caps, along with oil and gas resources.
In 2018, the Venta Maersk became the first commercial container ship to sail the Northern Sea Route through a newly opened shipping channel in the Arctic.
At the beginning of 2019, Russia began constructing the first permanent research station in the Arctic. Recent research activities conducted by Russia have focused on collecting evidence at the Lomonosov Ridge in order to strengthen its territorial claim.
This competition for resources has been named the ‘Arctic resources race’.
A race fuelled by us, as consumers, in towns, suburbs, and cities everywhere.
Our world, built from oil.
