Do you like to dress in black? Do you prefer a solitary pint of cider in the back of a smoky bar? (the smoky part might be hard to fashion in this day and age) Do you favour wearing a trenchcoat? Do you feel in a state of perpetual ennui? Maybe you are a Berliner! Or perhaps you’re a member of a Darkwave band… maybe both!
Fearing are not Berliners, the three-piece unit are in fact Californian. I can neither confirm nor deny that they tick any of the other boxes above.
Oh, except one: They’re a Darkwave band. I mean, I’m not an expert on the genre, but if you want a quick encapsulation of what Destroyer (the follow up to debut full-length Shadow, out via Profound Lore) is, it’s the darkest and wavyest of Darkwave.
And what is Darkwave anyway? Well, as I understand it, it’s the more goth-end of the New-Wave/ Post-Punk spectrum.
Now I don’t know about you, but when I think of either of the above genres I think bands like Depeche Mode, Joy Division, The Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees, all bands (arguably) most synonymous with the eighties – though all bands who continued (and evolved) well past that era.
So what does a modern Darkwave band have to offer (here namely Fearing)? Well I’ll give you the facetious answer first: a thirty-five minute homage to The Cure’s “A Forest”, from the band’s 1980 album Seventeen Seconds, is what they have to offer. With a significantly less dynamic singer in James Rogers.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that that’s not really fair (there’s kind of truth in it though). It would be glib to reduce Destroyer to one song, from over forty years ago, but what can I say? This is kind of the tone, mood, texture, vibe and sound of the whole album.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? I don’t know. If you’re looking for a consistent atmosphere, this album has it. Also, with Rogers and Vega being producers, they have constructed a record that is lush in its dreary dark tones.
So, no Destroyer doesn’t really sound like “A Forest”, it sounds like a band that loves early Cure and knows how to make a really good sounding record, that should have been made somewhere like Swindon, but actually comes from California. Doesn’t sound so bad does it? And it’s not.
Latest single “Gravity” encapsulates the sound of the record as well as any other. A driving bass line, a simple 1,2 bass, snare drum rhythm, Rogers intoning lines about being pulled down, darkness and fading light, some sparse, guitar tones, soaked in chorus and a little synth to add to the gloom. That’s more or less the Destroyer formula.
And they do it well. Somehow the band inserts just enough subtle variety from one track to the next to keep the interest, (more from a production point of view than a songwriting one, it must be said). Also, even in the album’s perpetual dreary mono-tempo, everything still has a certain driving energy.
And no, it’s not all exactly the same tempo.
Closer “You See Me” is the closest the album comes to letting loose, as the band ramps up the energy levels mid-track. In the end I actually feel a certain gratitude that they didn’t try to insert some Muse-inspired, operatic bombast. That would have been awful.
Destroyer confuses me. I’m confused because all reasoning says I shouldn’t like it. It’s the same mode for the whole album and (production aside) I don’t hear anything new. But, but, but it’s an enjoyable listening experience. I’ll probably come back to it. I’d maybe even bump the rating up after a few more spins.
Buy the album here:
https://fearing.bandcamp.com/album/destroyer
6 / 10
TOM OSMAN