Critic's evaluation
A few days before completing three years since Stoned Hare released their last full-length, the band surprised fans by finally announcing the successor to Lullabies, their debut album. Entitled Medication For Enemies, the material consists of the second studio album by the group from Taubate.
A strident, sequential sonar welcomes the listener with a slightly accelerated cadence. Coming from Nick Carvale's drums, it leads the listener into a melodic explosion that makes the listener feel like they are in the middle of fireworks governed by mystical colors, transforming the sky into a perfect twilight rainbow. Between the unison harshness of Carvale and William Barbosa's guitars in the melodic base, there is a velvety sharpness that, coming from the synthesizer, flies over the sound scope, delivering a sense of false coziness through a curiously gothic vein. Interestingly, too, it's as if the song, just from its initial instrumental, functions as a kind of funereal soundtrack to a torn relationship. Through a dark and precise verse, a deep-toned voice invades the scene, completing the soundscape. It's Carvale giving Love's Born To Die a dark hard rock structure that recalls the atmosphere of songs written by Marilyn Manson. Contagious from its lyrical cadence and the way the guitar, with its echoing riffs, adds textures that leave the ambience embraced by an enigmatic stupor, Love's Born To Die, with its clear influences of Foo Fighters, White Stripes and Manson himself, brings a lancinating melancholy that entangles itself among a lyricism that presents an individual who disbelieves in love. Hurt and with a heart full of scars, the character is exhausted from having his feelings deceived and ends up seeing in passion the shame of exhorting his emotions. Even so, with a densely ultra-romantic touch, the individual romanticizes death, but places it as a form of mockery, a revenge for all the pain the deceased has put him through.
The sunlight doesn't completely illuminate the environment, leaving it full of shadows and building shapeless silhouettes through the shadows. The floor is sandy and the landscape rocky. With an uncomfortable dampness and a nauseating smell of sulphur, walking becomes almost impossible. In the distance, however, a shaft of natural light acts as a siren song, hypnotizing the character and making him follow it for long distances, without even letting him realize that it is an optical illusion, coming from his own state of feverish madness. This is how the energy becomes agonizing, dramatic and schizophrenic. Between explosions of a sonic punch that inserts pinches of doom metal into the melodic recipe still being cooked by Carvale and Math Rotondano's guitars, Felipe Vellutini's bass takes center stage with its strident, dark groove and cynical features. Like an omnipresent character obsessing the character lost in his agony, Carvale comes up with a manipulative vocal interpretation, while making Like A Broken Doll a song in which the character exhorts his lonely torpor in the midst of his prison guarded by the lies of a timeless utopia.
A blaring sonar welcomes the listener with a false sense of humor. Plunging into a sensual, soft and rollicking verve, it doesn't take long for Modern Love to exude the aesthetic influence of Talking Heads in its melody. Even in its early stages, the sound is a good mix of art rock, hard rock and blues, with a prevailing stridency that gives the melody a garage-like rawness. With a rhythmic-melodic-lyrical scope that is denotatively theatrical, Modern Love is a song in which Stoned Hare analyze, as the song's title suggests, modern love. Citing the open relationship, mentioning the practice of threesomes and placing love as a practice of sharing, the track criticizes the absence of pure and sincere sentimentality, as well as questioning sexual practice governed by simply carnal attraction and thus making the body a mere piece of desire. The lust of libido.
The change of radio station is heard in the background in an organic and manual way. While hissing sounds are mixed in with voices uttering indecipherable phrases, a beat is heard in the background with a linear cadence. And it is precisely this beat that carries the introductory melody. It's a melody governed by an alternative rock melancholy body, even though it exudes cheerfulness and velvet. Also sounding like dramatic hard rock, Radio Vox is governed by a harsh torpor which, filled with overlapping vocals suddenly amplifying the harmony, serves as a bed for a plot presenting the deceptive comfort of the depths of a suffering unconscious. Again emphasizing a funereal lyrical character, Radio Vox features a character trying to master the feelings of others just to spare himself the pain of rejection. Even so, the song has a foundation that encourages people to overcome, to turn the page and give life another chance.
The atmosphere is dark and frightening. It's as if, at every moment, bright red eyes break through the darkness and cast a cannibalistic and even judgmental desire upon the victim. It is then that a light of extreme whiteness blinds those present while saving the individual from the clutches of darkness. Unconvinced, the abyssal beings seem to be plotting a battle to win back that piece of flesh trapped in their suffering unconscious. With a mixture of alternative rock and hard rock with a metallic and strangely debauched essence, Gods In The Garden comes with a waveringly truncated melody and a dryly pronounced ending. This is how the track is yet another Medication For Enemies piece dealing with the absence of faith in love to the point of showing an individual exhausted by attempts to search for emotion. Even so, with a dark slant, Gods In The Garden highlights a vampiric behavior in which ingesting the essence of another is a way of promoting a sense of numbness, satiety and well-being, without there necessarily being any passion. In this sense, it's as if this song touches on the lyrical content of Modern Love.
The sound is acidic and strident, with a synthetic feel that gives it a sci-fi character. Between fast, hot explosions, in which the bass sounds like a bolt of lightning cutting through the sky in a chaotic blackness, the melody surprises by transforming itself into an infectious, swinging and joyful mix of blues and flirtations with boogie-woogie. With syncopated notes from a piano with sweet keys, it's interesting to see how the sour stridency of the bass ends up marrying with the embryonic velvet that exudes from the song. Between howling lyrical verses, the drums, here shared between Carvalho and Beatriz Faria, follow a simple and precise linearity that gives Close Enemies consistency in its flirtation with stoner rock. It's curious, based on this range of issues, that the track manages to both incite maturity and bring a certain tone of youthful dispute between two people to find out who is the best. Close Enemies is almost a hilarious track about living with that person with whom you have no affinity whatsoever.
It's like the sunrise being seen beyond the mountains embraced by a dense layer of black clouds. Despite being steeped in a softly trotting melody, the song carries with it an acidity that curiously inserts a hint of new wave into alternative rock, repeating Billy Idol's similar feat in its sonic essence. Flowing towards an apex of numbing and nauseating explosion, Mirror To Mirror is like the observation of an empty reflection, without essence or soul. It's a demonstration of an individual who lacks a sense of self-confidence and self-admiration. A dull person who gradually fades away as other people's view of them shapes an erroneous and depressing image of someone whose core has been corrupted.
Despite its gloominess, the opening melody has something exciting about it in the midst of its dirty, gloomy hard rock. It's as if abyssal beings were flying over a sky devoid of color, but filled with bursts of lightning and thunder, tearing apart the deaf-mute loneliness of such a dark ecosystem. Melancholy and numbing in its harsh linearity, the title track flows into a fast-paced climax that flows into a dramatic, weeping instrumental, like a plea to a manipulative God. This is how the title track invites the listener to accompany an individual with a manipulative, self-centered, selfish and extremely condescending essence. Even so, there is an interpretation that can transform this former ideal, because the ones who may be manipulating are the friends, and the sufferer ends up being the protagonist, who is at the mercy of deceptive and false relationships.
It's interesting to note the leap in maturity in the space of three years. With Medication For Enemies, Stoned Hare have not only evolved in the competence and consistency of their sound, but they have deepened and formed a solid foundation for their songwriting style. Thus, the fusion of torpor, melancholy and ultra-romanticism has made them find their own sound and their apex, therefore, came with their recent material.
From this point on, it will no longer be necessary to communicate the group's aesthetic influences. After all, they are perceptible amid the originality of the melodies, which sound gloomy, visceral, dark, melancholic, numb and even lancinating in their agonizing dramaturgies.
With even gothic traces in its sound structure, Medication For Enemies shows Stoned Hare often dialoguing about wounded hearts and rejection. However, the album also features songs with profound questions about the lack of self-knowledge, self-respect and admiration, as well as social analysis of the evolution of relationship practices.
To support the weight and consistency that exudes from the sound of each of the eight songs, the group teamed up with Bruno Mokado for the mixing work. It was with this professional that the group and the album reached a synergy in space-time and managed to communicate the same degree of maturity and musical awareness.
By providing an equalization that is so balanced that every instrument and every sound can be heard clearly, Mokado has managed to bring out all the melodies that make up the melodic-mystical melting pot that is Medication For Enemies. Hard rock, alternative rock, stoner rock, art rock, doom metal, sci-fi, boogie-woogie and even new wave can all be heard. All in a way that shows that Stoned Hare have allowed themselves to experiment on the album, simply because they have already understood the sound that defines them and know how to expand their horizons without damaging their aesthetic base.
Rounding off the technical scope is the cover artwork. Also signed by Carvale, it features the female figure of a demon highlighting her own silhouette in a contortionist pose. Curiously, the union of this figure with the black background created an unreasonable aesthetic familiarity with the design developed by Round Hill for the cover of Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace, an album by The Offspring. Even so, the originality is there and fuses sensuality, desire and movement, qualities present in the new material by the group from Taubaté.
Independently released on 03/16/2024, Medication For Enemies, despite being Stoned Hare's second album, shows the group at the peak of their form. It is here that musical awareness has found support from an understanding of the melodic ambience to be represented. It's no wonder that the stylistic experimentation carried out on the album sounded so competent, displaying a consistent and precise authenticity.
