This reviewing business is weird, I tell you. Every time I am about to press play on a new album, I feel a mixture of curiosity, excitement, reluctance and aversion. Every time, without fail. While the first two feelings are probably self-explanatory, the last two might need some clarifying.
For most people, music, or any kind of art, whether they are making it or consuming it, serves as some kind of escape. I am no exception. I listen to music because it takes me places. Since I already own a plethora of albums, and everything I don’t own is just a few clicks away, I know where to find music that will take me where I want to go. Listening to something new, something I don’t know anything about, means leaving my comfort zone. Hence the feelings of reluctance and aversion.
Yet, despite those feelings, I always press play. It’s an exercise in overcoming my own biases, a way to broaden my horizon. Most of the time, what I’m hearing is worthy of attention in one way or other. Sometimes, something familiar awaits me. Sometimes, I don’t like at all what I’m hearing. Every now and then my willingness to go into unfamiliar waters is rewarded with an exceptional listening experience. The latter feels fantastic, like a whole new universe opening up.
I have avoided reviewing post-rock or post-metal releases for quite some time now, because I over-indulged in the sound. It’s a bit like having eaten too much chocolate cake on one occasion. Once you’ve had too much, you’ll stay clear of that sweet treat for some time. Just the thought of it will make you want to throw up. But sooner or later, since you really like the taste, you’ll want to try some version of it again, even though you are well aware that there are only so many ways to make chocolate cake – or post-rock, to return to the matter at hand.
So, long intro story made short: Seeing Orochen’s new EP Thylacine labelled as post-rock, I approached it with a little more reluctance than other new releases. Fortunately, I was in for a positive surprise.
Orochen are a relatively new band from Gothenburg, Sweden, who have yet to release a full-length album. Hopefully, it won’t take them too long to do so, because judging from the EPs they have released so far, it might turn out to be a post-rock album really worth hearing (yeah, yeah, yeah… I know… Some of you will say there’s no such thing).
Thylacine’s four tracks feature an eclectic mix of post-rock, but post-rock with a gothic, industrial tinge. The influences the band lists, such as Nick Cave and the Bad Seed, Neurosis, Nine Inch Nails and Joy Division can well be heard. What makes the EP even more worth checking out is that each track, although audibly made by the same band, has its own character.
Burial Mounts, the first piece of music on the EP, is arguably the release’s most memorable track, especially its beginning. The first half minute or so, featuring hectic drumming paired with guitar feedback and followed by a spectacular wall of sound, does an excellent job in having you listening up and listening closely straight from the get go.
Already with the second track, Drift Away, the soundscape changes completely. Here, the industrial influence is strongest and the atmosphere created by monotone drumming is cold and dystopian.
Inside the City brings yet another change and begins with an Eastern sounding, folky tune which is paired with bits of a recorded speech about religion and the possibility of an afterlife.
The vocals on Thylacine are mostly clean, the lyrics easily understandable, except on the fourth and final track, The Jonestown Deathtape. Here, they are of a guttural and growly character, closer to death metal than to post-rock, and accompanied by tremolo picked guitars.
Thematically, the album bemoans “a world where humans and the environment are thought of as economic resources”, “a society formed under a new religion that most of us know as capitalism”, a world “where only one thing is certain – nothingness.”
The cover for these dark musical ruminations features a pretty impressive charcoal drawing of a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, which has been extinct for almost a hundred years now.
If, like me, you have a love/hate relationship with post-rock and post-metal, Thylacine might very well be worth your attention. I, in any case, am glad that this ended up in my review basket and that I pressed play on a new release yet once again.
(8/10 Slavica)
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