Labels: Exile On Mainstream
Review by: Alex Deller
What do you reckon you’d get if folks from Unsane, Oxbow, EinstÜrzende Neubauten and flu.ID got themselves together to make a bit of a din? Well, if you’ve got even a smidgin of imagination the first few tracks on Celan’s debut won’t be too far removed from the sonics you might’ve mentally conjured: an artier take on Unsane’s blown-out churn with Chris Spencer’s vocals pushed up front and as incredulous as ever at the woes life has seen fit to heap upon his shoulders. On first listen things might appear to be mid-paced business-as-usual, cuts like “All This And Everything” operating like heavy, rust-caked machinery as industrial rhythms grind cog-like against Niko Werner’s guitarplaying, itself fluctuating between fine-tuned delicacy and moments of unrestrained heaviness. Suggesting that it’s all just another variation on a familiar theme would be to do “Halo” something of a glib disservice, though, with the album entering more troubling, ambient territory as it progresses and revealing more with each successive listen, testing out fraught static hums and gloomy piano motifs as it clankingly unfurls into something rewarding beyond the visceral headrush of that initial noise rock pound.