AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: RORCAL – SILENCE

(We’re honoured to be hosting the premiere of Rorcal‘s new album in advance of its September 29 release by Hummus Records, with words by our own Andy Synn)

Success, or so they say, can be a double-edged sword.

What, for example, do you do after releasing an album which – in my opinion, at least – is both the very definition of a true cult classic and one of the best records of the year? How do you follow something like that?

Some bands double down on what already worked. Others switch things up and try a different approach.

But Rorcal… they just reached even deeper down into that aching, infinitely empty pit of gnawing hunger and nameless horror that exists within their collective soul and tore loose another spiteful slab of auditory darkness that they chose to call Silence.

There’s no way, of course, to talk about this album without comparing it to its phenomenal predecessor.

Or perhaps that should be predecessors, plural, as there’s no getting away from the fact that Silence is part of a long and illustrious lineage of albums whose value, and whose visceral intensity, hasn’t always been appreciated as much as it should have been.

Hopefully, however, that will change once this record finally claws its way out into the world – with us acting as willing, if not necessarily licensed, midwives for today’s premiere – as not only is Silence a more than worthy successor to 2019’s seminal Muladona, it’s also a perfect jumping on point for new fans looking for something to scar their eardrums with.

Take a listen, if you will, to the oppressive, pounding rhythms and aggressive, scalding distortion of opener “Early Mourning”, which effectively captures the essence of the band’s sound – an acerbic amalgam of corrosive blackened fury and suffocating sludge, at times tipping all the way over into soul-crushing doom, all wrapped up in a caul of noisesome atmospherics and nihilistic ambience – in less than four feral minutes.

It’s as powerful, and as punishing, an introduction to the album (and, indeed, to the band) that you could ever ask for, and this first impression is then only further reinforced by the near-constant, nigh-on catastrophic bombardment of “Childhood is a Knife to the Throat” and the chaotic, almost Grindcore-level assault of “The Worst in Everything”.

 

 

But it’s only as the album develops that you start to understand that whereas Muladona was all hack and slash, offering up a thirty-eight-minute thrill ride of biting teeth, bloody claws, and bruising hooves, Silence is all about the deeper burn, leaning as it does more towards the acidic sonic sludgery which defined earlier albums such as Heliogabalus and Κρέων while still retaining the lethal intensity of their more recent years.

Early signs of this were already apparent – the sinister second half of “Childhood…”, for example – but its moments such as the terrifying transition from skin-crawling ambience to skull-crushing rage during “Extinguished Innocence” or the occasional glimpse of morbid melody hidden beneath the claustrophobic crush of “Constant Void” suggest that the band’s long musical kinship with the likes of Dragged Into Sunlight and Gnaw Their Tongues has resulted in some significant sonic bleedthrough along the way.

This is even more apparent during cataclysmic closer “No Alleviation, Even in Death”, which signs things off with such a ferocious flourish – part Sludge, part Doom, part blackened industrial meatgrinder – that you may well have to take a significant break to collect yourself once it’s finished.

But you’ll keep coming back. That’s for certain. Because we all know that pain this good is just one step removed from pleasure.

https://www.rorcal.com
https://www.facebook.com/Rorcal
https://hummus-records.com
https://www.facebook.com/hummusrecordsofficial

Catch Rorcal on tour supporting the release of Silence at one of the following shows:

29.09.23 Geneva (CH) – Cave 12
30.09.23 La Chaux-de-Fonds (CH) – Bikini Test
13.10.23 Besançon (FR) – Les Passagers du Zinc
14.10.23 Nijmegen (NL) – Soulcrusher Festival
20.10.23 Luzern (CH) – Sedel
21.10.23 Winterthur (CH) – Gaswerk
22.10.23 Braunschweig (D) – Nexus
23.10.23 Kiel (D) – Alten Meierei
24.10.23 Berlin (D) – Schokoladen
25.10.23 Leipzig (D) – Connewitz
26.10.23 Budapest (H) – Analog Music Hall
27.10.23 Linz (A) – Kapu
28.10.23 Fribourg (CH) – Fri-Son
03.11.23 Zürich (CH) – Rote Fabrik
17.11.23 Lyon (FR) – Farmer
18.11.23 Paris (FR) – Cirque Electrique
01.12.23 Neuchâtel (CH) – Bar King
02.12.23 Frankfurt (D) – ExZess