ALBUM REVIEW: Love, Death And Decay – Stake
Nobody could accuse STAKE of not being forward-thinking. The Belgian quartet have spent the better part of two decades fusing alt and post-rock with sludge and post-metal to captivating effect. Rebranding from STEAK NUMBER EIGHT to something a little less unwieldy in 2018 before issuing their fifth album Critical Method the following year, 2022 marks their return with sixth album Love, Death And Decay. It’s immediately identifiable as the Ghent natives’ work, an unmistakable ebb and flow that feels as effortless as it is tightly controlled and executed. This time, they’ve also rejigged the tracklisting to cater to both physical releases and digital, both of which get their own distinct lists.
Opening the digital version is the title track, charging out the speakers to grab the attention, while the physical opens with the far more sedate Dream City, the idea being that – especially with vinyl – the act of listening is far more ritualistic and they can ease the listener in much more carefully to their convoluted soundscapes. While Dream City is just that – dreamy – with more minimalist and repeating motifs, the title track that opens the digital version, and the version being tackled for this review, does feel more of an opening song, though how much of that is simply because it’s there and we’re used to attention-grabbing openers is anybody’s guess.
That thunderous opening gives way to a sludgy, post-rock swell in its latter minutes, while follow-up Deliverance Dance might start quiet but it expands and swells to a huge crescendo by its midpoint, alternating between gentler clean singing and thunderous roars atop riffs that wouldn’t be out of place on an earlier MASTODON record. Being a post- band, their songs naturally tend towards those swells and contractions that are the hallmark of the genre as well as an emotional slant that’s impossible to ignore. It’s morose in its grim examinations of death and decay (guitarist Cis Deman was a funeral director at one point) but there are also more grounded explorations of love and death, informed by the loss of close relatives during the last few years.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a post-metal or a sludge album without a guitar tone closely related to tectonic plates and STAKE don’t disappoint on that front, though there’s also an injection of psychedelia and fuzz such as on Zone Out, while F*ck My Anxiety even throws in some sludgy KVELERTAK vibes that’ll make you want to dance. The quality doesn’t drop as the album progresses either; Deadlock Eyes feels like Crack The Skye-era MASTODON in its churning guitars and clean vocals, while Ray Of The Sun languishes across eight and a half minutes, steadily building from a slower opening half, all clean guitars and low croons, to a towering crescendo that threatens to envelop all in its path. Post-rock, sludge, post-metal, even flourishes of indie and shoegaze; they all blend together under one banner to create something enthralling. This is eclectic, sludgy post-metal that’s far more than the sum of its parts.
Rating: 8/10
Love, Death And Decay is set for release on September 30th via Hassle Records.
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