Although the cover to the album at hand looks a lot like that to Kall’s last LP Brand, and although one could easily jump to conclusions and expect similar sounds and attitudes, it’s not DSBM that’s hiding beneath this sad end-times scenery. But don’t expect to hear of much brighter stances either. Blacklist from New York City have always been decrying the wrongs that mess up our everyday lives, and they are still doing so now. On their new LP, their first full-length in 13 years, they “explore the meanings of love in a time of political and environmental collapse”. Can good interpersonal relationships save us and sustain us, or are they too going to be corrupted by the decay that surrounds us? That seems to be the question here.
Blacklist have been around for quite some time. They gained some popularity over a decade ago with the release of their debut album Midnight of the Century. Their sound, which mixes shoegaze, heavy metal and coldwave, even got the attention, and the praise, of mainstream publications like The Guardian. Having always been politically engaged, the band back then had listed “the rejection of looming new forms of fascism” as a thematic focus. Looking back on recent US history, this could well be called prophetic, and it seems that they have captured the zeitgeist again with their most recent work.
After being in an inactive status for many years, the band reunited to celebrate the anniversary of the release of their debut album with a show in Brooklyn, and started making music again. In 2020, the single Disorder came out. Inspired by the racial protests in the US, it put the punk in post punk and was rightfully loud and angry.
The mood on their new full-length Afterworld, being released by Profound Lore Records, is different. Darker, gloomier, colder and more melancholic, the music has a post-cathartic feel to it, as if the worst has already happened.
Fires of Black November opens the album with the sound of burning wood crackling below musing guitar riffs and clean vocals. Track number two The Final Resistance begins with pounding drumming and initiates a sorely needed energetic push, calling for love as the final act of resisting. Exciting and engaging, with lyrics you can easily sing-along to, the song carries the album’s central message and is probably most representative for the band’s dark, cold, electronics-laced sound.
The gloomy post-punk template is kept up throughout the following tracks, making for a consistent, satisfying listening experience. Pounding drumming seems to be one of the band’s songwriting staples, and it effectively disrupts the melancholia and the brooding, calling for action. You can interpret it as a wake-up call or as a blow to the guts, depending on your disposition.
The soundscape changes decisively with track number seven, Scarlet Horizon, and even more so with track number eight, A Stranger in this Country. Gone is the pounding drumming. Instead, there are soft female backing vocals to be heard. The atmosphere gets mellower, too mellow for my taste, and things are suddenly leaning towards pop. Has pop ever provided any real insight into the human condition without oversimplifying and overgeneralizing, without inserting the colour pink somewhere? I don’t think so. Staying clear of it might have been better for a band named Blacklist and an album named Afterworld.
Luckily, we are somewhat back on track with Shadow in Light and the final song Lovers in Mourning, but gone is the intensity that could be heard in the album’s first half.
I liked Blacklist’s new album and I’m surely going to come back to it, but I would have liked it better if the initial atmosphere had been kept up.
(7.5/10 Slavica)
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