I get the same sensations listening to “Ride or Die” that I remember getting when I first heard songs like Killing Joke’s “Love Like Blood” back in the day. And by that, I mean that here, Then Comes Silence manages to capture that same sense of the epic and the outsider, a mercurial blend of the anthemic and the edgy. That is a hard thing to do, so it is no wonder I have to go back nearly forty years to find a suitable reference point.
But like the aforementioned seminal band, Then Comes Silence has mastered making the alternative accessible, bringing the underground into the overground and doing so without losing any energy and allure that made them such a draw in the first place.
And that is a difficult thing to do, to embrace the masses without compromising on their sonic principles, but do it they have. Even though they have delivered a song built of brooding bass lines, fractious sonic guitar shards, motorik grooves, and dark lyricism, it isn’t hard to see “Ride or Die” finding favour in much more mainstream places.
And that is how musical revolutions get started!
Like a Hammer
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