April 22, 2011 • Dot Dash
By all rights I should love ∆bsence. It's got everything for me: a sound with elements of other genres I like, influences from other bands I like, all that sort of stuff. I can tell it's a pretty good album. I don't find myself enjoying it terribly much, though. Regardless, I can definitely see a lot of good in it.
∆bsence has a particularly cool sound—soft, dreamy, vaguely-rock-oriented passages akin to newer/softer Liars, but with an incredibly dark, suspenseful, and sometimes haunting edge to it. Tribal beats, mantra-like vocals, dissonant melodies, post-punk and dark ambient influences, hints of Mike Patton and Coil, and the occasional glimmer of hopeful beauty ("Séance", "Absence") help mold the music.
Obviously this is no "normal" rock album; the focus is more on texture and sound, and the band is quite good at getting something interesting out. Despite the lush synths, immense reverb, and mystical vocals, the sound is fairly reserved and sometimes claustrophobic, to nice effect. The band manages to be incredibly consistent without being too repetitive overall, although I found the album getting a bit stale near the last couple tracks (to their credit, it could have been much earlier).
Ultimately I think this is something of a niche album; plenty of other people adore it and it's certainly not bad (I doubt I've given any impression otherwise), but the overall sound isn't really something I can truly get into. (Liars' quieter bits were always my least favorite, anyway.) While it doesn't quite click for me, for others it definitely will; I'll simply appreciate it from afar and rate appropriately.
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