ALBUM REVIEW: Drag Your Coffin My Lord – Collapse Culture
The electronic/psychedelic hybrid duo of Ian Miller (KOWLOON WALLED CITY, INTERESTING TIMES GANG, STRANGELIGHT) and Graham Scala (BLEACH EVERYTHING, US CHRISTMAS, INTERSTITIA) make up the experimental and exploratory project known as COLLAPSE CULTURE. Collaborating together from their bases in Asheville, North Carolina and Oakland, California, the project has a true Coast-To-Coast flavour, incorporating elements from all over the electronic and psychedelic spectrum to create cinematic soundscapes filled with interesting sounds and spaces for you to immerse yourself in. Whilst both band members have backgrounds in much heavier projects, COLLAPSE CULTURE signifies stepping out of the comfort zone and letting the creative process do the rest.
Unlike the band’s debut album S/T, Drag Your Coffin My Lord has a stronger melancholic and melodic presence within the band’s grainy soundscapes. Moving away from the more abstract distortion, the band’s latest effort is one of finer margins, approaching melody and rhythm in a less abrasive manner and opening up to let the more psychedelic aspects of their sound shine through. Yet much like their previous album, Drag Your Coffin My Lord also serves as a sonic manifestation of COLLAPSE CULTURE’s processing of the current zeitgeist, something that gets more oppressive, intense and overwhelming with each passing day.
With COLLAPSE CULTURE’s original intention to create a dance record, Drag Your Coffin My Lord overall is something much darker. With that in mind it does contain similar genre aspects of their previous work but is ultimately more rhythmic and evolutionary. The album is considerably varied, moving through passages of grainy cinematic dub textures and post-punk techno augmented by mournful cosmic disco beats, filmstrip synthwave and haunting psychedelia. With this in mind, it is incredibly easy to be hypnotised by the album’s unique atmospheres. As the world around you seems to fall apart there is a strangely relaxing aura to Drag Your Coffin My Lord, allowing you to reflect on the dire state of affairs that we find ourselves in.
In some ways it sounds as if COLLAPSE CULTURE have soundtracked a surrealist, possibly pre-apocalypse video game. The nature of the album is cinematic, yet it constantly and consistently evolves throughout, allowing the imagination to run through a plethora of different scenes and scenarios associated with the aforementioned pre-apocalypse environment. There is a certain level of spiritual intrigue that also comes with this album. Despite its confrontational manner in various sections, it is also quite an ethereal record. With this in mind, Drag Your Coffin My Lord has a rawness and urgency to it, as if the songs are battle hymns marching you towards your individual spiritual frontier to fight with things attacking the fringes of your being. With the inherent darkness and intensity of that image, it must be stated that Drag Your Coffin My Lord is open ended, leaving plenty of room for new interpretations with every listen through.
Opening up with Existence Decay (Wherever There’s Hope There’s A Trial), the album introduces the listener to this strange and shifting cinematic world that COLLAPSE CULTURE have created as vocal chops reverberate into the ether. The dark atmospherics accompanied by a grooving bass and funky beat offer an interesting contrast, which is something that transcends the album. The next track Nuclear Semiotics (Superstructure Collapse) emphasises that point. Room 641A (Ecology Of Fear) is where we see more of the psychedelic elements make an appearance, as swirling pads lull you into a trance alongside the hypnotic beat. Wasp And Orchid (The Map Precludes The Territory) is a more meditative track, as swelling drones ride you through eerie environments akin to the other world.
Bail Money Stashed In The Crawl Space (Non Frustra Vixi) has a MASSIVE ATTACK trip-hop vibe, super grainy with floating melodies over a slow methodical rhythm section. Strategy Of Tension (King Kill 33) is similar but ups the granular aspects and the tension; fuzzing and fizzing, this is the tensest song on the album. It fades into a two part magnum opus of the album Dead Mall Blues (Negative Epiphanies And Necropolitics). Haunting and sombre, there is a real sense of a desolate environment unfolding before you. While part one is a droning introduction, part two consolidates all the songs that have gone before it, evolving into a nine-minute mesmerising epic of cinematic texture and musical psychedelia.
Whilst this style of music is not Miller and Scala’s usual fare, what they have created with COLLAPSE CULTURE is thought provoking and oddly relaxing. Being able to process utter despair with dance like beats and moving synth wave atmospheres in this manner is intriguing and mystifying. Drag Your Coffin My Lord is worth a listen for those seeking something fresh and innovative.
Rating: 8/10
Drag Your Coffin My Lord is set for release on September 16th via Pax Aeternum.
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