Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Sweet Release Of Death, The
Label: Subroutine Records
Release: 2016
Runtime: 29:04
Rating: 4/5
The Dutch trio The Sweet Release of Death, who are coming to this year’s MENT festival in Ljubljana, carve out a pretty unique spot for themselves within the boundless genre sprawl of alternative rock. On their second album (also self-titled), they again keep up a sonic landscape built on a massive, heavy wall of smeared, layered and dissonantly roaring guitars that conjure up an unmistakable moment of noise grit. Sunk deep into this environment is a disillusioned, emotionally frayed female vocal, at times in frenetic outbursts fully worked up, but which can just as easily yearn »detached« through the delivery of the verses. The voice sounds estranged, lost, robotically cold and even extraterrestrial, and throughout its delivery it gazes out hollow-eyed from here into the black abyss of nothingness. Beneath this devilishly bloated guitar grit and the at times almost narrative vocal, which recites and so helps build a strong sense of dissonance, »slipped in« are simple, easy-to-crack, almost danceable rhythms. They hit one-dimensionally, and within this esoterica of the trio’s bittersweet, painful gloominess, the band pulls the listener toward trippy states of mental detachment. The realization that, with all this cohesion of the trio’s musical vision, they’re after a recognizable art charisma all their own doesn’t even come as a surprise anymore.
It’s definitely a lo-fi product when it comes to the sound design. It sounds rudimentary, raw, primordial, utterly elemental. No prettying up, no cosmetics. It rings out and speaks straight to you, unadulterated, without a trace of kitschy mimicry.
The band can induce cerebral rapture and a shutdown of the rational mind in the listener quite gradually, by building up the mood within a song. They can also pull this off through repeated repetitions and stacking up sonic traps at the same time, so that the sound gets stronger, tighter and hits even harder from one repeat of a phrase to the next. That way a song can grab you more and more as it develops, all the way to the final climax (Smutek). Over the sonic hyperplasia of guitar grit, simple single-string lines (sonically »busted and squeaky«) are often laid down, bizarrely minimal and made up of three to five notes, and with these the band effectively breaks up the danger of monotony that the compositions could otherwise develop.
The vocal is also an extremely important building block in breaking up uniformity in the compositions, since it doesn’t adapt to the forms of phrasing but communes freely, completely independently, with poetry, identifying with the emotions and intensely creating them in a deeply re-lived delivery. Yes. The vocal delivery reaches the listener intensely, and that’s a special appeal of this Dutch trio’s second album too, which all in all creates an almost sinister, if not downright creepy atmosphere, a perfect fit for the backdrops of low-budget horror flicks.
When you’re feeding your musical tastes and appetites, eyes set on the boundless expanse of drifting across the gloomy fields of the alternative rock underground at the upcoming MENT festival, you can’t skip The Sweet Release of Death’s live show! This is a band that, with its vision, recognizes no genre frameworks and boldly, truthfully and completely independently draws its own musical path. Gourmets who are still drawn to musical provocation, bizarreness and oddness in the alternative rock underground will very quickly recognize the unique personal musical ID card this band is developing.
The Sweet Release Of Death – Smutek (official video):
Lineup
Alicia Ferrer Breton – vocals, bass guitar
Martijn Tevel – guitar
Sven Englishman – drums
Production
Tammo Kersbergen & Floyd Atema
Tracklist
1. The End (02:35)
2. Post-Everything (02:55)
3. Kitty Swim Club (02:16)
4. India (02:49)
5. Fox (02:51)
6. Smutek (04:13)
7. 103 (01:55)
8. Downstairs 02:48)
9. Solaris 01:57)
10. Does a Bear Shit in the Woods (04:40)
