I have a soft spot for dark-tinged rock and punk and that’s why I picked the album at hand from our review basket without exploring much further. As is sometimes the case, it turned out not to be quite what I expected.

The musical underground in Germany has been producing a noteworthy amount of music of a dark, gothic, punky shade in the last few years and of very good quality too. Bands like (Dolch), Rope Sect and Ropes of Night are among my favourites; Wires & Lights do not necessarily fall in that category, but they have some good songs too. Naturally, I also like outfits from other countries that play music of a similar style. I loved Mana, the debut album by Idle Hands (or Unto Others as they are now called) and Gloom Ballet by death rock outfit The Wraith from Los Angeles.

If you know all or some of the bands mentioned above, you will immediately recognize where relatively new entity Rumours from Germany are coming from and what they are aiming at. A look at their bandcamp page cements the first impression: “The soundtrack to all of your apocalypse & funeral parties. A fierce attack of electrifying rock that makes the end of the world danceable,” says the info text on Rumours’ bandcamp page. And that sounds very much like the tag line of Rope Sect – “A dance on ruins. A doomsday revel” – also to be found on their bandcamp page.

Debut album The Lower We Sink, The Less We Care offers eight songs that are entertaining to listen to primarily because of the familiarity of their sound. The appealing mixture of rock, punk, goth and a bit of heavy metal will suit fans of all the bands listed above. Luckily, there is one thing that sets the album apart from related output and that is the production. Recorded on “authentic, bloody old equipment”, the music appears to have a patina and stem from times gone by, from the beyond. Because of this, a weird effect is crated – the pessimistic, nihilistic lyrics appear to be warning of a doomsday event that the listener, listening in the here and now, has already experienced. I quite like that. The production, therefore, is my favourite feature of the album. However, it does also have its drawbacks, since the vocals are scratchy and the lyrics not always intelligible.

Although the album cover is negativistic – you can see an oversized skeleton, personified death, shovelling dead human bodies to fertilise a lone plant – the music is not of that character, because it has melody, hooks and also some humour. Track number three, I am the Midnight, for example, has high-pitched background vocals singing “He’s the midnight” to accompany the chorus, calling cabaret performances to mind. Edgy and funny.

It took me a while to warm to this, but in the end I did. If Rumours continue developing their own thing in the genre of dark rock, this could turn into something good. The Lower We Sink, The Less We Care is a promising start and would have gone down better with me if it wasn’t trying so much to hop on a driving train.

(7/10 Slavica)

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