ALBUM REVIEW: Plagues Upon Plagues – SECT
Every single member of SECT has played in at least one essential hardcore band – as well, of course, as SECT itself. On guitar you’ve got Scott Crouse and Jimmy Chang of EARTH CRISIS and CATHARSIS respectively; on bass there’s Steve Hart of the somewhat underrated DAY OF SUFFERING; on drums it’s Andy Hurley of RACETRAITOR (and yes, FALL OUT BOY too obviously); and out front is the inimitable Chris Colohan of the legendary CURSED. The reason for the roll call is mainly to emphasise that if there are any of those bands you’re not familiar with you should rectify that as soon as possible, but perhaps before you do you could also take some time to behold the equally fantastic results that take shape when these five talented individuals come together.
Plagues Upon Plagues is the band’s fourth full-length and their longest by a considerable margin, though even then it’s hardly a huge undertaking at just 27 minutes all told. The extra time seems mainly to allow for a shift in approach for SECT both sonically and thematically; where previous releases have kept things suitably fast and furious as the band have raged against all manner of societal ills, Plagues Upon Plagues soundtracks a shift from activism to lament – “a funeral rather than a trial”, as Colohan puts it. The world is burning, the fascists are winning, and SECT and its constituent parts are done trying to change minds here.
It is fitting then there is a pervasive sense of gloom that hangs over Plagues Upon Plagues, one that sets in thick and heavy from the outset as opener No Uncertain Terms languishes across a six-minute runtime. Colohan doesn’t even need to scream or shout to get his point across here – though he does when the track requires it of him – his delivery more of a low, half-sung drawl that imbues lines like “There’s not a ‘fuck you’ left in the world that can cover all this” with just as much menace and venom as any snarl or bellow he can muster. The music itself is dynamic and doomy here, not a million miles from a slower CONVERGE track perhaps, the same proving true of a lot of the album to follow, and especially of its closer and semi-title track Six Black Lines (Plagues Upon Plagues).
For all its defeatism and despondency however, Plagues Upon Plagues is by no means lacking in bite and bile. Drowning In Sorrows and Inventory both land inside the two-minute mark and lean furthest into the sort of grindy, D-beaty whirlwind fury one might most immediately associate with SECT’s previous efforts. The Lovers Of Life is another rager, its target obvious enough from the title but made clearer still by lines like “The do unto others people are here / Run for your fucking life” and Colohan’s sinister, sarcastic whispers of “amen”, while #ForeverHome before it is one of the album’s slower, moodier cuts but perhaps also its most devastating as Colohan takes seething aim at those who turned to animals for one-way comfort during the pandemic only to abandon them en masse when life went back to ‘normal’ (“I don’t even believe in hell but for you…”).
Ultimately it is Colohan’s lyricism that hits hardest across the entirety of Plagues Upon Plagues; he shows no mercy – to anyone – as No Uncertain Terms puts it in, well, no uncertain terms: “You can say it’s them not me / But it takes a whole world to throw a whole world away / So what’s left to say”. We let this happen, we chose this, we are Six Black Lines’ “world record-sized pot of boiling frogs”, and Plagues Upon Plagues is a fitting and unforgettable funeral march for every last and wretched one of us.
Rating: 8/10
Plagues Upon Plagues is set for release on June 7th via Southern Lord Recordings.
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