After making their self-titled debut EP the same year they formed in 2001, Brisbane’s The Butterfly Effect wasted no time releasing their debut album. 2003’s Begins Here is utterly lightless. Any faint glimmers of contentment are swallowed whole by the depths of brooding, Tool-inspired shadow-work and the grit of Deftones’ poetically enduring dark night of the soul. This synthesis of influence is saved from any alienating abstraction by the fact that The Butterfly Effect knows how to groove (“Filling Silence”)—and they really know how to write a chorus. Their debut EP stunned fans of the genre with “Take It Away,” but Begins Here catapulted the band to significant mainstream exposure on the back of single “Crave”—a blueprint of seething verses and desperate soaring refrains they’ve been elaborating on ever since. Begins Here’s distant and distinct emotional weight would not be possible without vocalist Clint Boge. His wrenching, multi-octave performance on first track “Perception Twin” alone immediately inducted him into the ranks of Australia’s most recognizable alt-rock vocalists alongside Karnivool’s Ian Kenny and Cog’s Flynn Gower (who, strikingly, also guests on “Perception Twin”). Guitarist Kurt Goedhart’s signature haunted, ethereal texturing—most notably on “Beautiful Mine” and “Without Wings”—would prove just as vital in ensuring Begins Here was not just the beginning.