Welcome back, fellow synth-heads! Our feature for this month’s edition of Retrocution snuck in juuuust before the end of the month. But juuuust before the end of February is still February, so let’s take a few to chat about Morgan Willis and his new album, Damier Club.
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So, uh, yeah… remember that little quip in my year-end metal wrap-up about Carpenter Brut and Dance with the Dead? About how the Retrocution column would need to still exist for me to feature their terrific 2022 output in it? LOL AMIRITE? Well, buddy*, I’ve got some news for you…
*I used the singular here because as with most things I write, I tend to assume that only one person will actually read this
Retrocution is, I guess, back? And what better way to reintegrate our long lost column into society than with an absolute banger of a collaboration from Betamaxx and FM Attack? Dive on in and check it out!
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Again we have another band gracing the halls of this non-metal column (although pretty loosely so), one that certainly we on staff here cannot seem to get enough of and statistically speaking, quite a number of you all out there in Reader Land probably feel the same way. Hail Spirit Noir are no strangers to boldly and unabashedly pushing the boundaries of their sound and the world of metal in general, but on Mannequins, the outfit abandon all pretense of metal entirely and deliver something quite unexpected, definitely a little out there, but no less of a success than anyone would expect.
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I’m not gonna lie, it feels kinda weird to resurrect my Retrocution column for the first time in more than a year… with an artist who, by his own account, has been actively trying to move away from “conventional” synthwave for a while now. But for James Kent, I’ll make an exception.
After all, Kent’s work as Perturbator was one of my earliest exposures to synthwave. I wouldn’t be anywhere near as big a fan of this music — maybe a fan at all — if not for Dangerous Days. So even though my tastes within the genre have since shifted a bit more toward the pop end of the spectrum, I tend to listen whenever Kent drops something new — conventional or otherwise. And in the case of his latest effort, Lustful Sacraments, the listen proved to be quite an excellent one.
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Synthwave is one of those genres that has become a go to for metalheads due to its horror movie kinship, its wildly creative sound and its imagery which at times can mirror some of extreme metal’s most enduring gorehounds. Perturbator and James Kent have been at the tip of this spear since Terror 404 back in 2012 and has shown more and more growth and depth on each successive album. Now, with Lustful Sacraments, the band dive further into the industrial side of the synth coin but do so in a way that doesn’t leave anything behind. Think of it as an experiment gone incredibly right. Head inside for an in depth discussion via The Nine Circles Audio Thing.
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Nine Circles 