A Word Virus for End Times.
Here it comes. god's big cop-out. From the Mid-East, Korea, Sudan, Czechnian rebels, Sri-Lankan Moaists with rocket launchers. Planes without pilots. Semis falling off cliffs. Bodies strewn in the street like that fantastic kool-aid bash in Jonestown. Maggots and cockroaches feasting on melting flesh. The falcon cannot hear the falconer, etc. Blast off.
What will it sound like?
Angry, fuzzed out nuclear blasts of white noise. Electronic sound approximations of a tapeworm eating the scraps of food in a Biafra child's intestines. Corroded reel-to-reels of the last, great American slow-punk band distorted to the point of distortion pedal-drenched feedback and slow grumbles. Tin-can/wooden box percussion celebrate the death ritual of the innocent, and the high priest gives his stoned monk moans into a megaphone over a broken P.A. Shattered, ear-poke melodies with tribal drum beats and yelling... lots of yelling.
To say that Sightings' End Times is the soundtrack to the Armageddon would ignore the 10 to 15 other records that came out this year which would also provide perfect backdrops to our descent into chaos. Sightings just happen to do a better job of providing a thinking man's soundtrack to utter destruction with their wailing effect-treated guitar, rattling metallic, robotic atmosphere sounds, cantankerous drum pounds and shouts blending into a blitzkrieg wall-of-sound.
Case in point: "Slow Boat," introduced by puttering factory sounds interrupted by bursts of screeching guitar given the heavy pedal treatment. Vox from inside a cage at first sound sultry and sexy in a dangerous convicted felon manor, then menacing and urgent like a young Arab boy yelling at Israeli soldiers over wrongly targeted mortar. One pitch reached by singer Manipulated basslines sound like dayglo keyboard gunfire. Another ugly beautiful nail studying the future of music.
Asked to defend my belief that this is the future of music, I give you this: As a young, jaded punker, I listened to diatribes by old men about the end of the world, what we were doing to cause it, and how to prevent it. Problem was the backbeat was comprised of unoriginal power chord ejaculation, and it sounded like a lecture. Also, I like the idea of things falling apart and sitting back and watching them unravel. It will be so majestically pretty. This would be the cocktail music to that ideal evening, yes I said yes and I will say yes.
1. Cotton Sweaters
2. Failure of Words
3. My Due Potion
4. The Brains you were Born With
5. Carry On
6. Bile Duct
7. Only Below
8. All the Scams
9. Slow Boat
More about: Sightings
