Aural Exile – Attrition (Misereality)
It can be difficult for a musician to reflect his or her influences in a manner where any comparison is going to seem at all accurate. Having brought the songs into being, it’s easier for their creator to point out that a particular chorus was an attempt to play a Band A deep cut backwards, or that the bridge in the title track came out of listening to Band B after drinking a half bottle of absinthe. But it may not come off that way to listeners who are taking the music at face value.
Aural Exile – Attrition (Misereality)
It can be difficult for a musician to reflect his or her influences in a manner where any comparison is going to seem at all accurate. Having brought the songs into being, it’s easier for their creator to point out that a particular chorus was an attempt to play a Band A deep cut backwards, or that the bridge in the title track came out of listening to Band B after drinking a half bottle of absinthe. But it may not come off that way to listeners who are taking the music at face value. I mention this because of the bio that accompanied Aural Exile’s most recent release, Attrition. The music contained therein is described as darkwave/death rock that mixes in neo-folk, black metal, and international music alongside a list of influences that references everybody from Coil to Mercyful Fate to Dead Moon. The problem, though, is that very little of Attrition sounds like any of that at all.
There are some gothier tendencies to the album (the solo project of Richmond-based musician Andrew Grimoire), to be sure, most notably the opening and closing songs. The former relies on a minimal, Sisters Of Mercy-style backdrop to underpin some spoken vocals, and the latter strips the sound down even further to a dark drift, overtop of which rests a long sample from the television soap opera Dark Shadows. And there’s not anything specifically wrong with these songs, in and of themselves, but the material that’s sandwiched between them is a whole different beast, something far more aggressive and unlikely.
While some hints of the rawer, punker strains of what could fall into the spectrum of goth or death rock (early Christian Death, Rudimentary Peni maybe) occasionally make themselves known, the bulk of Attrition is characterized by something that seems closer to early-90s post-hardcore. Both “Avoid the Prism” and “Interreality” start with material that isn’t a million miles removed from Fugazi, with an almost funky rhythmic pulse holding the songs together as they shift from quieter restraint to larger, more anthemic choruses. And though the rough, dramatic vocals aren’t dissimilar from Rozz Williams, given the musical backdrop a lot of it sounds like a more stripped down take on early At The Drive In. There are still moments, however, that reflect some of the initial intention – “Plaga De Memorium” incorporates a brief acoustic passage that sounds like Current 93 making carnival music (alongside a coda that unfortunately sounds like some of the soundtrack work Danny Elfman’s done for Tim Burton movies), but quickly reverts back to the sort of uptempo material that’s present on the album’s better songs.
And, despite how good some of the songs are, this lack of focus may be what shoots Aural Exile in the foot. Not that I would encourage any artist to pander to a certain crowd or try to limit themselves, but listeners approaching Attrition expecting the sort of darkwave/death rock/goth suggested by both the band’s self-applied description and imagery won’t find much of it. Non-goth listeners who might otherwise get into the more straight-forward heavy material might be put off enough by the genre descriptions and visual aesthetic that they wouldn’t give the project a chance in the first place. But while the album is somewhat uneven, and features a variety of facets that can seem incongruous, there is solid material present, not only in the quality of the songwriting but in its defiance of expectation. I’m not sure who the audience for this album would be exactly, but anybody looking for a goth inflected, soap opera sampling, post-hardcore oriented melange of obscure (and obscured) influences could do a lot worse.
