Rope Sect is about seclusion.
Renunciation of society.
A dance on ruins.
A doomsday revel.
Naked spite.
Eleutheromania.
Obedience.
So say this clandestine German band in their own words. They also say this about their new album Estrangement, which you’re about to hear:
“It can be seen as a reflection of all the ruins we are surrounded by, the increasing reign of pessimism over optimism in a world that seems to have doomed itself as well as expressing a sense of not belonging and the connected urge to escape all this and live by your own rules in your own little world, passing all the warning signs of human kind going astray.”
It seemed important to begin with the expression of these themes, which trace back to the Personae Ingratae EP in 2017 and the band’s conception of a cult that retreats from society, forms its own rules, punishes transgressions by hanging, and revels in the world’s ruin, sneering and “becoming intoxicated while waiting for doomsday”. The hangman’s rope becomes a source of fear and of adoration.
It seemed important to start here because, in each of their features, the themes mesh with the music and vice-versa. Even if you haven’t already figured that out by listening to Rope Sect‘s previous works, including Personae Ingratae and especially The Great Flood debut album from 2020, you’ll understand when you hear Estrangement, which thematically is described as “a kind of mental prequel to Personae Ingratae story-wise, exploring the thought why people (would) feel estranged and seclude themselves from society and form their own sect.”
The music is off almost all the beaten tracks that make up the map of this particular site, but it still connects. Just as many extreme metal bands have sought to do, Rope Sect have found their own outsider’s way of creating sensations of ruin, repulsion, hopelessness, discovery, and the defiant jubilation that might be found in rejection and escape, the delirium of freedom in a shackled world, where death is conceived as the ultimate freedom.
On Estrangement they again do this through a blending of what many listeners would call post-punk, goth-rock, and death-rock, even though Rope Sect has resisted a couple of those descriptors — a pulse-punching blend that’s not too pretty and not too perky, just ugly and dangerous enough that the afore-mentioned themes don’t get obscured by all the rhythmic and melodic hooks, of which there are a multitude.
Speaking of hooks, the singing on Estrangement is one of its standout features, an acknowledgment that is compelled even in the context of a site that proclaims it shouldn’t be done. It evokes memories of others, the likes of Ian McCulloch, Morrissey, or Peter Murphy, but if those names don’t ring any bells with you let’s say instead that Inmesher‘s voice is smooth and seductive (but with some rough edges), layered for harmony, and it’s expressive — albeit within a range that’s mainly shades of gray or the muted hues of dusk.
Depending on where you are across the album, the vocals may sound somber and sad, regretful or resigned, grim or wailing, beckoning and embracing. In all cases they play a prominent role in carrying the melodies, and (to repeat) they’re loaded with hooks.
But the hooks don’t end there. The music and the beats have more hooks than a long-line trawler out in the midst of a spawning run.
The drums jump and careen, and the bass vividly throbs and nimbly darts, collectively getting a listener’s muscles jumping too. Occasionally, the drums bolt into blasting, but back-beats and somersaulting fills are more prominent, and the tempos vary in line with the changing moods of the music.
As for the guitars, they render the hooks too. The riffs are pleasingly dirty in their sound, but the leads often ripple and chime, piercing in their clarity. As they all maneuver they create sinister sensations of chilling menace, episodes of diabolical frolic, shadows of abandonment and gloom, and seductive narcotic hallucinations. In all these changing sensations, it’s important to underscore that the rope hangs over everything.
As on Rope Sect‘s previous releases, a lot of these songs would work quite well on a dancefloor and cause it to shake. But a lot of them would cause people to sway instead of bounce, lost in an intriguing or inimical vision, or to look over their shoulder with a shudder at what might be creeping upon them from the darkness.
For someone like this writer, who spent the ’80s listening to punk, New Wave, and post-punk long before discovering the attractions of extreme metal, Estrangement is like a homecoming, but a special kind of homecoming, because the music also connects in its spirit with what we spend most of our time focusing on at our putrid site. It’s dark, it’s perilous, it’s devilish, it’s indeed a dance near the abyss — and a very addictive one.
The album concludes with “Rope of the Mundane Love,” which features guest vocals by King Dude, and it’s a fitting end — very much a blood-rusher but very diabolical, simultaneously sending different kinds of chills down the spine, an experience of calamity and grief that ultimately proves to be mesmerizing.
Estrangement was mastered by Mario Dahmen at Liquid Aether Audio. It will be released by Iron Bonehead Productions tomorrow (May 17th), when orders can then be placed for LP and CD editions at the label website; digital pre-orders are available now at Bandcamp (see the links below).
IRON BONEHEAD:
https://ironbonehead.de
https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/rope-sect-enstrangement
https://www.facebook.com/ironboneheadproductions
ROPE SECT:
https://ropesect.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/theropesect
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