Rhododendron Emerge from the Gloom with “Ascent Effort”

Rhododendron’s second album Ascent Effort is out now. The Pacific Northwest trio spent their teenage years making the crusty, chaotic Protozoan Battle Hymns, a record whose Dali eyeballs and mythical creatures already hinted at a band unwilling to settle. This one is tighter, heavier, and more patient.

Ezra Chong, Gage Walker, and Noah Mortola met at School of Rock and thread a lineage of Northwest noise through blackened avant-garde jazz and doom. In a 2024 recorded set they called it “post-apocalyptic campfire music for woodland giants,” a phrase that gets at the foggy menace and sudden shifts in momentum. Tracks like “Firmament,” an eight-minute math-rock triptych, and “Stow” which pauses between wreckages, show a trio learning to ride dynamics without losing the sense of threat. Walker’s growling bass tone near the album’s end makes the headphones feel unsafe. Chong’s lo-fi screams cut through at the right moments.

The record’s title tracks its own arc: an ascent effort that climbs, collapses, and climbs again. It does not promise comfort. It does give a reason to pay attention to a young band that has already moved far beyond the basements.