Death by Gong – Descalator (Recommendation)

Like steps that continuously climb up a staircase or a steady heartbeat, “Troy Toy” leads the listeners into Death by Gong‘s album Descalator. Either way, Death by Gong lulls their listeners with their almost relaxing sound. For the first minutes Descalator doesn’t differ much from a Radiohead album around the In Rainbows phase or the Ghosts-albums by Nine Inch Nails.

The second track “Until It breaks” lives up to its name: a heavy bass drives the song forward. Now we are treading a straight Post-Rock path and the following “Heavy Air” is one of the catchiest songs on the album. The melody sticks with you for days and your head will nod by itself long after the song is finished.

Just from the first three songs, you can see that the stylistic spectrum here is very wide and it keeps growing through the rest of the record: “Everything Is Given” plucks along electronically while guitars in the middle of this song floor the listener. “Descalator” starts off like a sounding, unpredictable current, before the song opens up and “freestyles” in the chorus. Despite all those different styles, this album flows excellently.

What stands out in Descalator is the atmosphere of the album. At times, I felt like I was listening to a release on Consouling Sounds, for example. Death by Gong sounds quite unique in terms of combining this kind of post-rock with almost meditative vocals (which reminded me of Kasabian at times).

Descalator is an extraordinary package, a AAA-release so to say: arrangement, atmosphere and accomplishment all those things are present here and shine in extraordinary ways.