Kicking off with a song that runs for almost seven minutes shows you that this is a band that isn’t bothered about building things up slowly, that they know their audience, and that they know their audience can handle the big, the brooding, the bold, and the brilliantly anthemic, right from the off. The switch between “Sprout of Disharmony” and the following song, “My Redemption,” proves, not for the last time, that they also have a sense of adventure.
If the opening salvo cuts through a dark, post-punk-scape, “My Redemption” is a reminder that those early darkwave pioneers and the New Romantics that headed for more commercial climes originated in the same scene, the same alternative dance clubs, and the same studios.
And if those two tracks, taken together, show that Christine Plays Viola is a band that understands the past that inspires it, “Desolate Moments,” the current single, clearly shows that they also understand the future they are helping to build. There is a wonderful tension built on the fact that they beat out a fast waltz while darkly serenading the listener with a mournful ballad… opposites are so attractive.
“No Going Back” is the band at their most visceral and venomous. The intro builds a glitchy, growling industrial soundscape, from which eventually a harsh melody and whispered, half-heard threats emerge, in turn becoming a song, though one that feels only part human, and increasingly part machine.
“Crypt of Misery” takes a buoyant and brooding bassline and hangs all manner of white noise and savage synth, razor wire guitar, and tribal beats on it, and the album’s final offering, “Blood Calls Blood” is poised, poignant and powerful, pushing into almost alt-metal territory whilst never losing sight of the gothic atmospheres that act as the bands creative crucible.
All scenes and genres have a past, and Christine Plays Viola is certainly aware of theirs. But whereas most band in the post-punk/gothic/darkwave scene are happy to emulate what has gone before, lean into past glories and ride the coat tails of earlier pioneers, here is a band that, for once, feels like their only mission is to build up enough sonic velocity to escape that past and build a whole new, exciting and perhaps unexpected future around them as they clock up the sonic miles.
