It’s now a fact that my attention is always caught by records that have a particular concept behind their creation. My most recent find is this three song-concept album by Sidus. A balanced mix of Post-Rock with atmospheric and instrumental Post-Metal that revolves around the developing process of earthquakes and panic attacks. If you want to know how it goes, keep on reading!
Trigger warning: I know that these can be sensitive themes, if you’re not in the right mood to read about these, take a breath and read something more comforting, I won’t be offended I swear. I struggle with anxiety so I know very well how it makes you feel.
Seismos is a three song-concept EP as Sidus tell us on their Bandcamp. The band is from Berlin but its roots are also in Greece, it started as a one-man project with Spyros Olivotos before the full line-up of nowadays. I suggest listening to the EP with headphones. I enjoyed this record with and without them but I have to say that this time headphones are really needed to catch every nuance of the sound of Sidus.
I choose to talk about this record because (you may have got a hint before) it touches some sensitive themes that are important to me, so I found it necessary to give it a listen. As you may see if we’re here it means that I liked these three tracks.
Seismos is based upon the phases of an earthquake, three songs that represent the three stages of this natural event that unfortunately can be very shocking in places where humans live. Along with the earthquake, the band put another subject for this record: panic attacks, they can be divided in phases too, and these phases are very similar to the earthquake’s ones.
“Rupture”, “Seismic Wave” and “Seismos”, these are the three sections of the event.
“Phase I: Rupture”. A literal ‘rupture’ happens when you experience these kinds of events. The track sounds a little eerie but not too much, the riffs and the melody lead to an increasingly alarming feeling that will peak with the rupture itself that doesn’t happen in this track yet, it leaves you there waiting for the ‘moment’.
“Phase II: Seismic Wave”. Unfortunately the track doesn’t take up where we left at the end of the previous track. The rupture takes a few seconds to come, because we’re never sure of when it’s coming. The few moments before these accidents could make us feel somewhat disoriented. The track starts with a strangely calm guitar, should we say the calm before the storm? I think that it works in this case. Then the ‘rupture’, the ‘seismic wave’ itself or the core moment of a panic attack comes. Musically, there’s a typical dynamic in this track that I have already heard in instrumental Post-Rock or Post-Metal before, but listening to it bearing in mind the concept behind all this gives a specific meaning to the music. Towards the end there’s a feeling of ‘fighting’ to survive that leaves us there, curious what’s coming next.
“Phase III: Seismos”. For Sidus this phase represents the final stage of the event: when the body (the soil or the human body) collapses. Reminding us that every shock comes to an end. At last, we have to return to ourselves and put everything together after the collapse, repair it all again. We may find something good in it, or not. It’s life after all. But nothing and no one can take from us the certainty that everything must come to an end, even the worst night must give way to a new dawn.
