ALBUM REVIEW: Rave Immortal – ALT BLK ERA
Alternative duo, ALT BLK ERA, have put out their highly anticipated debut album Rave Immortal. The sibling duo, Nyrobi and Chaya, have had an insane year with performances at festivals like Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds Festival, opening for the likes of TOM MORELLO, and their debut EP, Freak Show, releasing to high acclaim.
What sets them apart is their genre defying sound that heavily blends hard rock, grunge, drum and bass, pop, and more. Adding all of that to their message of being a safe space for anyone who understands the feeling of existing on the edge of social norms, a space that has allowed the duo to be more open on Rave Immortal on personal topics relating to, along with diversity and inclusivity, Nyrobi living with chronic illness and the support she felt from Chaya.
For them, the record is a way channel that pain and turn it into something beautiful and powerful.
To open the album, we start with Straight To The Heart, a track that opens with acoustic guitar and pop melodies that are accompanied by soft vocals, giving it an ethereal vibe, and even when heavier drum and bass is bought in to give it a gnarly edge, you still find yourself in awe at how beautiful it sounds. This pattern continues in the next two tracks, Come On Outside and Crashing Parties, that start out, relatively, soft with alternative rock meets pop that then builds into something heavier, whether that’s electronic beats or guitar riffs, but it just sounds stunning throughout.
That’s not to say that every song is calm. We also have plenty of options when it comes to anger and frustration towards life, whether it’s reacting to the horrific events we see everyday on the news or the smaller things that heavily impact everyday life, there’s something here to sink your teeth into.
Whether it’s the fast, aggressive drum and bass meets hard rock in Come Fight Me For It; Upstairs Neighbours. Here, it sounds ethereal at first with the harmonies until harsher noises and rough spoken word comes in, building things up until we get to the conclusion of a heavy breakdown that brings together everything brilliant about combining loud drum and bass with hard rock. We can only imagine the insane scenes of this being performed live.
Then, there is the likes of Catch Me If You Can which opens with a creepy tune before shifting into industrial rock with a stunning breakdown that brings it altogether, in fact it’s a song that could very easily exist on the Arcane soundtrack.
Rave Immortal is a stunning debut record from an exciting duo. It’s something that one needs to experience to fully understand it as no words will ever do it justice. Simply outstanding.
Rating: 10/10
Rave Immortal is set for release on January 24th via Earache Records.
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