Saturday, May 31, 2014

Fadensonnen- Badlands (2014)

What initially turned me on to Fadensonnen was their ruckus.  Bands like them and Aufgehoben know how to skirt that fine line between a wall of noise and aggressive, progressive rock music.

With Fadensonnen's newest release, Badlands, the sound remains the same, but the feeling is much different.  For the first two tracks, gone is the rush of intensity reminiscent of Guitar Wolf.  Instead, Badlands places the listener into a static-filled, psychedelic sound.  Yes, the guitars still feel overrun by delay and reverb, and the drums still keep a fast pace, but even turned up to full blast, the underlying energy seems different.  That isn't to say that this is a bad thing, it just wasn't what I expected, and possibly not even what the band had in mind going in to record.

A great example can be found in the final moments of the opening track, "Machete".  As all the feedback fades out, the listener is left with a chopping guitar similar to something out of Boredoms' Vision Creation Newsun or Guardian Alien's body of work.  It is this sound that I hear through both the first tracks, simply buried beneath the relentless wall of noise.

The final track feels much more like Fadensonnen's White Knight album and is about where my initial expectations put the sound of this record to be; the type of sound that would make Air Conditioning want to get back in the studio. 

While overall the album is different than I expected, it still sounds great.  Badlands can be streamed Here, and do yourself a favor and pick up a copy on record while you still can.

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