Here we go. Between 2012’s Sinews and this moment, we’ve had it easy. We felt some music in our guts, some in our heads. Much of it we didn’t feel at all.
We feel White Suns. The tonal savagery, the chaos of feedback and effects-manipulated guitar screech, the unpredictable song structures and outbursts of mix-consuming destruction. These elements work together as they work against us.
White Suns remain a “rock” “band.” They survey the idioms of punk, post-hardcore, math, noise, the avant-garde. They choose what they like and they leave the rest to rot. On record, despite the mayhem of juxtaposed ideas and abstracted tones, they convey the mental image of three humans shredding together. In live performance, they actually are three humans shredding together. More accurately, they are ire and confusion. They are young gods or young demons.
“Priest In The Laboratory,” the first filthy handful of upcoming LP Totem, premieres below. Hear Dana Matthiessen’s drumming careen between precise blastbeats and lumbering tom work while his cymbal abuse synchronizes with his bandmates’ six-string transgressions. Vocalist Kevin Barry again makes himself known to us within the din as his words and guitar work collude with Rick Visser’s arsenal of electronics to take us down. When the mania crumbles, chunks of noise residue air out one by one into the bare mix, like mutated memories of prior riffs forced to fend for themselves against the silence. This you can feel.
Totem lands on March 25 via The Flenser. You can preorder the album on vinyl or CD now.
• White Suns: http://whitesuns.blogspot.com
• The Flenser: http://theflenser.com