I know that it is my job to put music into words on behalf of the music that falls under my pen, but sometimes, I read the accompanying blurb and realize that the perfect phrase has already been found to sum up the sound. Before I gave ‘Terror By Night,’ the latest single from Arms & Armour, a spin, I was intrigued by the brilliant phrase “doom wash of guttural noise., as the track faded out, I realized that nothing I could write would capture their sound so succinctly. I still have a job to do… I’m going in.
Coming from a point where the down-tempo groove of trip-hop meets the stygian glower of goth, even that simple description doesn’t really do it justice. I need to mention too the hypnotic, ritualistic nature of the music; the brooding bass and beguiling beats; the forbidden marriage of analog and digital sounds; the inherent bleakness and also the beauty; the sort of beauty only found in decaying architecture and faded glamour; the dystopian blend of drone and delicacy. See what I mean, what they have already said in five words, here I am wittering on and still not fully capturing what they are doing here.
But, in my defense, the ability to find a reviewer lost for words…or at least causing them to flail verbosely, should be a badge of creative honor for any artist; after all, if describing them was easy, then we have probably heard it all before. I’ve been around the block a few times, explored the musical landscape for a while; I have braved mosh pits and wandered through the goth lands, sat in awe at folk finesse and been amazed at avant-garde electronica, rocked out to the heaviest of sounds and done the dark wave dance under the alternative club’s neon glare…but I haven’t heard anything like this before!
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