A happy puppy full of exuberant energy, that’s what this lesser known album is!
Hello everyone, and welcome to the first edition of my new show titled ‘Lets shine a spotlight on a smaller band who don’t normally get enough attention!’ yeah yeah, I know the title needs work but hey, it works for me. The subject of this week’s magnifying glass of exposure is the band Black Hole Decibel and their debut album Velour Life. Now, I know this album was released a few years ago and we normally review albums before they are released, but hey, I found this gem and I’m going to trumpet them so let’s keep it between us, shall we? Good.
Pressing play on this record is like stepping barefoot into a room where the air is too thick to breathe yet oddly sweet. What follows is a dark and sumptuous fever dream of sound. It’s woozy, slightly menacing and undeniably bouncy.
The band constructed an album that exists somewhere between post-industrial decay and dream-pop seduction. There is both abrasion and allure, friction and fog. This duality is the heart of Velour Life, a troubadour that waltzes through a dust-laden apocalypse with one hand clutching a guitar and a gun in the other. The whole thing has a staccato rhythm to it, especially the first few songs. “Acceptance” and “Mondays, am I Right?” have a certain bouncy quality about them, all off-kilter tones and a whiff of the slightly unhinged, which is nice.
“Killing the Root” hews closest to what you might call ‘traditional’ songwriting, yet still retaining that bouncy quality. It sets the tone for most of the second half of the album really, it’s like the band existed in an energy drink-induced haze of over-stimulation and threw everything they had at the first few songs, then got knackered and thought ‘you know what, we need a lie down’. I am massively over simplifying things of course, but to my ears it seemed very much like they returned to the Earthly realm from a galactic jaunt, oh don’t get me wrong, they still had wizard hats on, bouncing around on space hoppers and generally having the time of their lives, but the songs seem just, well, tighter somehow.
Each track feels less like a composition and more like a fever dream captured at its peak. Guitar’s shimmer and shatter, caught in reverb-heavy delays, the bass is subterranean, moving beneath the mix like tectonic plate shifts. This scattergun approach serves the band well, you can hear all sorts of influences in their gumbo pot of sonic ideas, a dash of Classic Rock, a sprinkle of Grunge, a dollop of Stoner and a healthy dose of tasty riffery, all combined to make an appetising stew, lovely, now where’s my spoon?
The production on the album also needs mentioning, considering it’s pretty much all done in-house, it’s remarkable in its restraint, nothing is overplayed. Everything feels precisely wrong in the most beautiful way, and special shout out to the snare drum tone, chef’s kiss on that one from me. All told, this is a rather good album, and I’m sure the folk in the band would appreciate you going and listening to it, well, go on then, off you go.
