16: How To Destroy Angels
Album: How To Destroy Angels EP
Genre: Industrial
Label: The Null Corporation
How To Destroy Angels is an exciting prospect. After Trent Reznor announced that Nine Inch Nails was going to quit touring in 2009, possibly forever, the legion of devoted fanatics like myself wondered what would come next. Reznor at one time reassured us that he would keep going in music and also dangled a carrot of mystery out in front of us. Would there be more NIN material? Would the rumored Gary Numan/Trent Reznor collaboration take place? What new music would the Industrial king unleash upon us? We didn’t have to wait very long. In 2010 Reznor and friends got together and created two excellent pieces of music, one of which was his and long time comrade Atticus Ross’ superb score for the sociopathic Facebook drama The Social Network, and the other was their (Reznor and Ross’) new band with Reznor’s wife and West Indian Girl front woman Mariqueen Maandig. They called the new band How To Destroy Angels.
The name is interesting, to begin with, because it traces the roots of Industrial back to an EP released by Coil, one of the godfather bands of the genre. Reznor’s particular brand of Industrial Music was always decidedly rockist in it’s approach, with Reznor himself having stated that he wanted people to get the full on Rock and Roll experience with NIN. How To Destroy Angels is something different in the regard that it focuses more on the Industrial & Electronic side of things than the Rock, and while the sound is unquestionably Reznor, it doesn’t exactly follow the same paths as before. Although, it should be noted that there is a comfortable familiarity in the sound pallet that Reznor draws from. You always know it’s his music and no other music can be mistaken for it. It is further impressive that, in using a factually limited selection of sounds and textures, no Reznor release ever sounds identical to any other. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just worth pointing out that he’s developed a unique sound and that How To Destroy Angels is not a break from it, just another step in it’s evolution.
The various styles played with throughout the EP’s six tracks all root in Industrial but all conjure up very different images and feelings. The opening cut “The Space In Between” is a slow tempo burner (pun intended, check the video,), which features Maandig’s sultry vocals over a droning wave of sound and electronic beats. The piece is almost Trip-Hop to me and I always think of this track and the final part of the EP “A Drowning” as almost being like an Industrialized Portishead, with Maandig serving as an even darker, colder Beth Gibbons. “A Drowning” is actually quite a good cut as well, being the EP’s longest piece; it’s got a lot of time to develop. It’s the least noisy and most calming part of the whole EP and it paints an almost romanticized image of sinking deeper and deeper into the depths below.
The Trip-Hoppy nature of those two tracks doesn’t belie the sound across the board though. “Parasite” for example is a very composed Noise collage with a beat, with roaring guitar blasts and distorted synth textures heavily contrasting the smoother, more engulfing feeling of “The Space In Between.” It’s actually fascinating to hear Reznor sounding lyrics as sung by Maandig. She’s got a downright beautiful voice that fits in perfectly with the Industrial noisescapes.
The reason How To Destroy Angels is exciting is that it is a projection of things to come. It fulfills the promise of new material as well as stoking the coals of anticipation even more. It also does a good job of setting this new band apart from Nine Inch Nails while still staying a part of the camp. Even though Reznor and Atticus Ross are on to their next project of scoring David Fincher’s American remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, hopefully we’re going to be seeing more of How To Destroy Angels in the future.
Top Tracks: “The Space In Between” & “Parasite”
15: Sleepy Eyes Of Death
Album: Toward A Damaged Horizon
Genre: Post-Rock/Electronic Rock
Label: Sleep Capsule
It’s not something I think about all the time, but it does bother me to see the evolution of mankind’s relationship with technology pushing us closer and closer to a time and place where we’re all going to be linked into our Bluetooth headsets, constantly communicating with a giant motherboard computer system because it’s convenient. The melding of man and machine is not a prospect I relish, but from an aesthetic standpoint, the melding of organic and synthetic in a sonic sense is something that can be downright fantastic. In the case of local Seattle band Sleepy Eyes Of Death, the melding of the organic and synthetic is done in spectacular fashion and in the name of good music, a kind of evolution I can get behind.
Sleepy Eyes Of Death perform a kind of (mostly) Instrumental Rock in the vein of bands like Explosions In The Sky and Mono; spacious, transcendental music that hipper-than-now-tastemakers would have you refer to as Post-Rock. And seeing as how I’m a hipper-than-now-tastemaker, that’s what we’re going to call it in order to save time. The difference between guitar based bands like Explosions In The Sky or Mono and Sleepy Eyes Of Death is that Sleepy Eyes trade in two of their theoretical guitars for analog synths, which creates a towering, futuristic sound that engulfs you like a wave of white light.
Toward A Damaged Horizon is Sleepy Eyes’ sophomore release and it sees the line between electronic and organic growing even more indistinct to the point where the two parts are starting to resemble each other closely. The sound has also grown in size. Dark Signals, Sleepy Eyes’ previous release, was a solid album but it was very contained in feeling and only hinted at the scale that they would reach on Damaged Horizon. Here’s the metaphor: If Dark Signals was the feeling of looking over the night lights of city from a hill, then Damaged Horizon is the feeling of looking at the night lights of a dozen cities from an airplane, except you’re not looking out a tiny window, you’re looking as if you were the airplane, with stars above and earthly radiance below.
Sleepy Eyes of Death gets a lot of comparisons to French Indie Rock band the M83, but while the two go in for similar sounds with their synthesizers, the M83 are using them to create structured Pop Music with hooks while Sleepy Eyes are making sonic panoramas that are not confined to simple Pop Song structure. However, Damaged Horizon also features the closest thing to a full on Pop Song that they’ve done so far with “The Sound Of Light Breaking Down” which is their attempt at creating an almost clubby dance track. And it works, proving that if the Post-Rock route doesn’t pan out, they could go in a more Daft Punk direction.
On the other hand, most of the tracks feature Sleepy Eyes at their most expansive, with songs that are breathtaking in scope and beauty. The prime example of this is the epic “Distant Horizons Bled Dry” which is their longest composition to date and also one of the most cinematic. It sounds like watching a fleet of star ships taking off for a journey through the stars, or perhaps a meteor shower exploding into digital rain. I apologize. This article has been a bit heavy on the longwinded metaphors. But maybe it’s appropriate; Sleepy Eyes Of Death are well known for a heavy visual component when performing live. I guess what I’m saying is: develop Synetheisa and then listen to this band.
Seriously though. If you’re a fan of the Post-Rock genre, you’ll like this. If you like epic synth music with soaring guitars and spot-on drums you’ll like this. And finally, if you like longwinded, heavily visual metaphors being used to describe sound (something you can’t actually see,) then you like my writing… which means you should give this album a try and I’m a cheeky bastard. Cheers!
Top Tracks: “Night Wires” & “Distant Horizons Bled Dry”
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