Last time I checked, the collapse of Mother Earth was still in progress. The German crust punk/post-black metal band Downfall of Gaia, named after that very same process, can therefore claim undiminished relevance despite being active for 15 years. Silhouettes of Disgust is the name of their new album, their sixth in total, and judging from the title and the cover photo, their worldview hasn’t gotten any brighter over the years. Who can blame them? Humankind seems to be cursed to perpetually make the same mistakes and learn nothing from it.

Ruined or run-down buildings wrapped in fog and ground sealed by concrete as far as the eye can see, grey and black the prevailing colours – such is the album’s initial scene. A depressing setting, desolate and mute, and one that quite a few bands form the wider black metal spectrum have been bemoaning for some time now. The vast urban landscapes that we have created and the forms of living that go hand in hand with them are having a negative effect on us, they are making us sick, in body and in mind.

Silhouettes of Disgust encompasses eight songs which focus on the stories of eight different people, all residents of a fictional metropolis, each with their own worries and struggles. Loneliness, addiction, the fear of tomorrow, pressure from society and work, those are the subjects the songs deal with as explained by Dominik Goncalves dos Reis (guitar, vocals), one of the band’s founders.

The new album will certainly appeal to the band’s earliest fans, because it “progresses in part by looking backwards”, meaning: the band has decided to revisit their crust punk origins. This might be due to the fact that one of the project’s initial members, Peter Wolff, has again joined the band, or it might be because the individuals involved have rightly realized that the scene is oversaturated with post-black sounds.

In any case, you will hear a lot of classic d-beat drumming and much shorter songs on Silhouettes Of Disgust. A welcome change, if you ask me, but certainly no turnaround. The band’s sound is still a mixture of crust punk, post-black metal and atmospheric elements. Existence Of Awe, track number one, wastes absolutely no time on a gentle intro, making the album’s beginning refreshingly punchy. However, things get mellower from the middle onwards. Eyes to Burning Skies, track number five, for example, starts with dreamy female vocals, forming somewhat of an antipode to the strike that the album began with.

Music with a post prefix has always stood for rumination and brooding. I would argue that the majority has had an overdose of both during the pandemic. For things to change, we need more anger and aggression, more punk in post-black. The more the better. Downfall of Gaia are definitely on the right track.

(7/10 Slavica)

https://www.facebook.com/DownfallofGaia

https://downfallofgaia.bandcamp.com/album/silhouettes-of-disgust