My Review
Cult Strange - Rites of Passage
Those who learn nothing from the unpleasant events of their lives force the cosmic consciousness to make them reproduce as many times as necessary to learn whatever the drama of what happened teaches. What you deny subjects you. What you accept transforms you.
Carl Gustav Jung
Distrust advances, it digs the grave of all the souls that still believe in others, the evil shadows throw arrows, they inject the seed of corruption into every smile. And passion turns from red to black, as an inescapable and necessary fact.
There is a centre of observation of these changes that pass through the suffocating grooves of this band, emblem of an acute observation of the facts of the world, which with its suffered work establishes the border between terror and the need to escape.
Sorry for you, but you won't have a chance.
They only need four stabs in your sugary defences.
In fifteen minutes you will be dry-skinned, you will be extinguished by their murky breath.
Aleph Kali, already a corsair knight with Altar de Fey, here with the specification of Omega, is the werewolf who rummages through our flesh, undaunted.
Hordes of slaves pile up in front of the eyes of Oakland's frenzied men, obedient to a spiral of sound that envelops minds and moves them away from the dream.
Clothes shatter before these guitars that burst and reduce the ears to prayers, unheard, and diseases are born to strike fast.
To dwell on the density of these compositions is to feel the impulses that struggle to stay in these minutes.
I can hear a torrent of detritus that cannot find a place but which, by condensing, suggest textures and transversal evolutions to the four splinters.
Chaos here seems the solution and not a form of despair: a riding ivy full of nerves that you feel with the bass that explodes on the walls of each scaffold and then becomes a heap that rebuilds the house.
The drums are frenetic, somehow coming from tumour nodules of some secret tribe. It is devastating because it lives in symbiosis with its surroundings, which are metallic ruins, since the distortions with pedalboards coming from the guitars do not need so many variations to hurt the auditory system.
A disturbing, salty sound, on cracked hands and thoughts now in free fall.
Cult Strange push the rhythm: without breath, no valid defence can be erected.
The reference to the Red Lorry Yellow Lorry of Sages of Din, about which I will speak later, is exemplary.
Here is the secret, so feared, that opens the door to mystery: in the echoes of certain British fragrances of dark Brighton and London, the American band embroiders voluptuous dazzling textures to cut the umbilical cord.
The more you listen to these songs, the more you feel there must be a sea that keeps them safe.
Yes.
It must be.
Because as you listen to them you drift down to the ocean floor, where you find the victims of the 1906 earthquake that swept through nearby San Francisco.
And Cult Strange seem to play for those lost and choked spirits, listening to their sorrows still churning and creating heavy waves.
You can dance to their music with tears writhing in courage as they fly backwards. The speed is meant as a method of attack, like snakes waking up and attacking immediately for food.
Now I take you to the East Bay where the four daggers are busy with unaware victims...
Song by Song
Slave to the Algorithm
The beginning of the song is deadly: guitar intended to get the shadows in big trouble because it is not afraid for sure.
There's a share of wickedness that shocks, with the vocals being a procession, supported by the other three musicians: take the New York Dolls from the sunless side and throw them in the rolling bass and in the sumptuous, perverse guitars and all will be clear.
All that's left for the drums to do is to whip those poor shadows that die without having believed any of this was possible. As an opener track it's perfect: if the beginning can be of glam rock derivation, you soon realize that everything spreads in wonderful dissonant digressions.
A Rose of Chaos
A swaggering drumming, straight out of a dusty 70s cellar, opens the lopsided and catchy dance.
Then the voice and the guitar marry an idea of ritual dripping with Deathrock of pure class.
You can hear echoes of Germs and Consumers giving unintentional inspiration to this race to step on roses in chaos: the idea that Virgin Prunes also blow all their madness here, especially in the way of singing, constantly hovers. And that a macabre-esoteric attitude is the sovereign of this absolute gem.
Sages of Din
As I said before we have in the third track the impression that bass and guitar are the seeds thrown in the air by Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, elaborated and sacrificed but still present. It's, however, only a small portion: there are parts of purity and uniqueness in making this song a manifesto of an evolving musical genre. It is an extremely valuable fetish that is available to those who do not tremble at the idea of digging up mortal remains.
Hex/Pox/Vex
A melodic bass more than ever is ready to deceive us: everything becomes screeching, blades that go down into the lungs, doubled voices, and Sex Gang Children who bless it all.
And Aleph who makes Peter Murphy an evil priest.
The shock is given by a brutal attitude in creating a swaggering, mindless ride to kill any glimmer of light.
Majestic, it offers elements of elegance in its attitude to become the apotheosis that exalts the residents of darkness.
A seductive and distressing Ep to be served as a night meal: praise be to Oakland that offered us such beauty.
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
15 Marzo 2022
https://cultstrange.bandcamp.com/releases
