This piece originally appeared on the music review site Gigsoup.
Although it would be a fascinating mashup, Disco Doom aren’t a combination of the Bee Gees and Black Sabbath. They’re way better than that. Their new album Numerals is set to be released on the 4th December by Exploding in Sound Records, and it’s superb.
The album is like an experimental-rock film-score. The kind of thing that David Fincher might use if he didn’t keep Trent Reznor in his basement as his (very talented) musical gimp. Other than Dead Eye it’s a fairly melancholy soundtrack, with the noisy, yet never angry, guitars depicting the tumultuous life of our protagonist.
There’s a real variety in the songs. Opening track Ex-Teenager crashes in with heavy guitars and falsetto vocals but then, after only 2 minutes, it burns out beautifully. It’s the length of a punk song but with an art rock sound.
The aforementioned fourth track Dead Eye brings a head nodding pop hook to the mix. This comes straight after instrumental track Zonk, and Fraction, in which guitar feedback is played like a violin over the haunting chimes of a music box. Rather than the catchiness of Dead Eye being jarring after these more out-there offerings, it’s refreshing. There are so many indie / pop rock albums where the singles are upbeat and sing alongable but the album tracks are just slightly less successful attempts at that same formula. By placing Dead Eye in this album of six string soundscapes, they make it feel more genuine.
Shannon and Rock Yeah feel like mirror images of each other. Shannon starts out with an almost Pixies flavour to it but then morphs into an instrumental tack. Slowly each element of the song is stripped away piece by piece until you’re focused entirely on the clanging distortion of each individual note as it’s plucked. Rock Yeah starts out fairly gently and seems to wind down as a quiet riff continues on its own. Then, out of nowhere, they rock the fuck out as if the last two minutes had just been an extensive grungey quiet/loud introduction.
Really, Disco Doom’s Numerals is best described in their own words. ‘Adventurous Rock’ is how they describe themselves on their Facebook page, and Numerals is ‘Adventurous Rock’ with all the exciting experimentation that this new genre implies.
4 Stars.