Critic's evaluation
A little less than a year after launching themselves into the world music and recording markets with Eternal Blue, their debut album, Spiritbox now presents their third career EP. Entitled Rotoscope, it sells itself as a product steeped in industrial overtones.
Stunned sounds dawn a softened sense of alertness. Meanwhile, sub-basses are drawing out its movements in the form of a swell of almost white noise, which promotes a mixed sense of numbness, inebriation, and opacity. Before long, a vocal of icy, whispering sharpness immerses itself in the melodic sphere. It is Courtney LaPlante introducing an almost gothic sensuality with a provocatively inexpressive feature. As Mike Stringer's guitar is introduced with bursts of a harshness that breaks the acrylic dome that surrounds the song's somber scenario, depths of a nu metal similar to that of names like Hollywood Undead and of an alternative metal that flirts with the sound aesthetics of bands like Halestorm are perceived between the melodic lines. In the meantime, Zev Rosenberg's drums come in, giving more pressure and power to the dark and almost morbid atmosphere of the title track. With a chaotically catchy chorus, the song is the portrait of a melancholic and saddened life whose greatest companionship was with pains and issues that pull the individual into the deepest lament. Thus, coldness sets in, and not even tears are able to soften the feelings. However, the lyric character himself gives signs of possibilities for redemption, possibilities that are addressed to a single figure that at times seems imaginary, at others seems real and distant.
A high-pitched sound accompanied by a hypnotic, industrial tone pulls in an intensely striking bass groove introduction. Dark and undulating, the melody awakens a curious sense of insecurity and tension while Courtney emerges with a visibly contracted and controlled vocal that seems to be imbued with an insane desire to scream and express the anguish that dominates her interior. It is also true that, between an exaggeratedly bass rhythmic base, such vocal interpretation also suggests pinpricks of torpor that hide such an emotional rind. Shew Me Up is a song of a morbid and bloody nature that portrays a relationship that mixes melancholy, exacerbated hatred, and a metaphorical dialogue of the censorship of words that translate conflicting feelings of a dissatisfaction that bothers the accommodated and disturbs those of robotized behavior.
Through a slightly accelerated and rhythmic groove in 4x4, the drums receive a bass guitar riff that helps to create a rhythmic pressure in the process of awakening, but already with evident weight. Flowing into a chorus of dramatic energy, Hysteria is composed of a constant daze that infects the listener through its icy, strangely comforting temperature. Curiously, the track possesses a lyricism that dialogues with a sense of guilt, regret, and the extreme delicacy with which social bonds form in the life of the lyricist. Still, Hysteria is a song with a rhythmic structure that buys the listener's attention by having a more digestible and strangely upbeat groove.
It's good not to be fooled. What Spiritbox has done on Rotoscope is to give more weight and consistency to the new wave of bands that entangle themselves through a darker, denser field of rock. After all, the new EP offers a fusion of subgenres that exude a curious sense of sadness and drunkenness that manages to infect the listener with its morbidity.
In the meantime, the Canadian trio, with a mere six years of life, shows itself as the sound of Wandinha's personality, an iconic character from The Addams Family. After all, their sound, although dark, dense, full of pressure, and sometimes harsh and brutal, retains an incubated sweetness that is pronounced through cracks in the crust of melancholy.
That's where Spiritbox comes in bringing freshness to the global rock scene. In Rotoscope, the listener can easily notice the fusion of subgenres such as nu metal, gothic metal, alternative metal, and even flashes of hard rock. In this mixture of styles is that the Canadians show a series of notable influences that go from Slipknot, Hollywood Undead, Rage Against The Machine, Evanescence, Disturbed, The Pretty Reckless, Halestorm and even Scott Stapp.
Under the mix of names like Daniel Braunstein, Jens Bogren, Sam Madill and Zach Tuch, Rotoscope sounded morbid, melancholic, dark and dense in a way that brings maturity in its gloomy atmosphere that is very different from the young age of the Canadian trio.
Finally, it was up to Braustein and Mike Stringer the task of synthesizing the funereal sensibility of the mixers in a production that embodies all the torpor that exudes from the sound present on the EP. The task at hand was masterfully done in such a way as to convey even a sense of creative freedom.
Released on 06/22/2022 via Rise Records, Rotoscope is an EP that brings a strange sense of comfort amidst the limbo of the underworld. It is a work that mixes melancholy and torpor with pressure, density, and an industrial sound. An extended play that offers sadness in the form of an irresistibly conforming jam.
