At times I get a bit carried away by hypes or trends in the music business. One such trend was the whole sludge trend. I loved it, especially when it was mixed with post-metal influences. At the height of this trend it seemed you could not turn a corner without seeing a new band playing that style. This is when I learned about Sundowning. This German band was part of that wave around 15 to 10 years back. They released a debut album in 2012 called Seizures Of The World that had some rotation at my place back in the day. Truth be told, I preferred bands like Red Apollo, with whom they shared a split, and the likes over Sundowning. After one album and two splits the band went on hiatus and returns now with In The Light Of Defeat, I Cease To Exist. When I saw them returning to the spotlight I could not resist. I just had to review it, if only for nostalgia's sake. Can it reignite my love for the genre?
The album opens with “Exits Don't Exist / You Put A Leash On My Neck” , the album's longest track. The title being split up in two sections could indicate this is actually two songs combined, but it feels like one song. Immediately you notice the band is sailing a different course from their debut album. Gone are the hardcore vibes that album had. The post-metal influences also seemed to be a bit dialed back. This sounds much more doomy, bordering on funeral doom even. The vocals are also different, the focus is not on the kind of grunt that some post-metal bands like to employ, but are more a kind of lethargic chant. After about five minutes the album ditches the guitars and focuses on synths. Add a drum machine and a dark and suffocating synthwave vibe takes over. This escalates slowly over the next few minutes bringing back the weeping guitarlines from the beginning of the song to end it.
Second song “Imminent Ache” is closest to what I expected this album to be: pounding sludge that crawls really close to the death doom territory. As in the album opener this song takes a turn halfway through the song. Clean vocals are prominent front and center again. This changes the feeling of the song from a merciless plodding to desolation. Near the end of the track the pace is picking up again, after which the song sees a majestic ending with some heavy synths again. Dylan Walker from Full Of Hell provides guest vocals during this song.
“A Prison, A Cage” again starts off plodding and heavy, but with a different feel again. After some heavy grunting the baritone, gregorian vocal style takes over again, after which the song becomes more ambient only to return to the slow and heavy riffs we had at the beginning of the song as well. “Armor Of Indifference” is a strange song that is more experimental compared to the rest of the album. The riffing seems a bit off, the vocals are of the spoken word kind. Spoken word by someone slowly going mad, that is. The song again plays with the ebb and flow songbuilding we have seen the three tracks before it.
Album closer and title song “In The Light Of Defeat, I Cease To Exist” shows that during this whole process never gained any hope. This song is again bleak, playing with different vocal styles again, opening with the deep baritone we saw earlier rapidly changing to a deep death growl. This song, with all the motions it is going through is the best of the five songs on the album.
Having said all that, listening to the album proved to be a chore to me. I have had some time to think about what made it feel like work and can offer two main reasons. Firstly I feel the album is a bit disjointed. At first I thought it was maybe because my expectations were different because I already knew the debut album. Having heard the album at least twenty times by now I am sure that that is not the case. It has to do with the songs that just done really fit together very well. As if they were written too far apart in time to be a coherent whole. Secondly, the album is just too long. All songs go on too long and should be trimmed. Also, “Armor Of Indifference” is skippable. It creates a better flow in my opinion.
So, to answer the question I asked in the opening paragraph: Sundowning did not reignite my love for the genre I placed their debut in. I applaud their guts to come back under this name with this new style, but encourage them to work a bit on coherence and to kill their darlings where necessary.
