By Jonni D
A few seconds into Colored Moth’s sophomore album, ‘DIM’, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in for an album’s worth of decent, but standard post-hardcore fare. About 30 seconds through opening track, ‘Letter To Aldous’, however, all bets are well and truly off. With everything from noisecore to indie rock being presented with equal proficiency courtesy of the Berlin trio, there is many a twist and turn on the record.
The aforementioned introduction to ‘DIM’ segues from typical jerky At The Drive-In riffing to a cacophonic wash of dissonance and trilling guitar licks battling it out with the vocals for dominance in the mix; which incidentally lie somewhere between The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne and Johnny Rotten. That’s even before they chuck in the blast beat section. Oh, and did I mention it’s a song based on the musings of Aldous Huxley?
‘DIM’ only get more demanding of the listener from here on out. ‘Maelstrom’ plays on the traditional, high end post-hardcore spiked guitar attack by infusing an impeccably lush melodicism, that brings to mind the more esoteric trappings of a band like Circa Survive. ‘C’ is an inventive linking piece that effectively utilizes droning harmonics to create something really quite unique, while ‘Whataboutism’ leans on a more garage rock approach, with a controlled looseness to the rhythms and distorted bass. Colored Moth does a pretty great job with the more abrasive material too, though – case is point is ‘Indefinite Hiatus’, showcasing some unhinged utterances from vocalist/guitarist, Christoph atop structural turns in the song that will make you feel like you’ve been personally blindfolded and subsequently abandoned by the band in a local Escape Room.
That said, the album’s high point is the formidable instrumental, ‘Der Blinde Uhrmacher’; an exercise in oppression, with its deep, pressing synths and gradually swelling guitars. This is all before touching on the fact that this is a record touching on topics ranging from historic revisionism, social Darwinism, an indictment on intelligent design theory and the nature of human consciousness in a dying mind. With compelling lyricism married to similarly ambitious instrumentation, Colored Moth has delivered a grand, and unexpected, piece of art with ‘DIM’.
‘DIM’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.
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