Post Death Soundtrack Springs to Life with New Album It Will Come Out of Nowhere
By Deuce
There’s a lot to be said for Post Death Soundtrack, the Vancouver-based duo of Steve Moore and Jon Ireson. These are, after all, men who wear black (but not suits). They take their tracks hard, heavy, holistically, perhaps. They can scream just as well as sing, if not better. Albums, promotional photos, almost all of their artwork is dark, foreboding, challenging, even. Naturally, then, so is their music…
There’s very little to prepare you for their latest release, the long player It Will Come Out of Nowhere—except, of course, their first album, 2008’s Music as Weaponry. Also, the group’s follow-up, 2016’s The Unlearning Curve, might help the uninitiated for the raw dose of deliberate pathos and caustic social commentary scattered throughout It Will Come Out of Nowhere. But there’s little else to be of any help because, as the album title implies, this one definitely catches you when you’re not looking, or ready for anything else quite like it.
Take the music video for the LP’s first single, “Chosen Sons”, for example. You’ve got the double or triple time high hats, reminiscent of contemporary rap, a ponderous drum track straight from the 90’s boom bap, and the sort of dragging bass line that would do Bushwick Bill or any of the Geto Boys justice. All of this is interspersed with…what, exactly? Discomfortingly close close-ups of skeletons? Statues? Gargoyles? The remains of pteranodons?
Then there’s the vocals, steeped with deliberately desultory lyrics, brooding, lamenting something maybe, yet somehow still reveling or taking pleasure in it. “The perfect place for hope to hide”, Moore offers, and boy is he convincing. The track is typical of so much of the rest of the album in its sense of despair, yet ability to find a point in the pointlessness of much that takes place each and every day.
However, the pair strikes gold on “Crumbs” with a haunting piano melody, although it functions more like a bass, that’s infectious, kinetic, and almost makes the anguished vocals irrelevant in its sheer hardness. Interestingly enough there’s little rapping on this album, although many of the tracks are rugged enough for some of the more compelling music in this genre.
Perhaps Post Death Soundtrack’s greatest accomplishment is to take slapping beats and compose a platform for some of the strongest heavy metal outbursts with programmed tracks, as opposed to those of live bands. Then again, perhaps not. Either way, the group’s music is authentic, and much needed at this particular juncture in time and space.
