Eerie tempers in modern music are commonly achieved through slow moving ambient electronic and noise; the glacial epic taking its time to set in listeners’ bones and seep into the mind’s mood that way. Yet it’s a combination of crust punk roots with heart-attack-fast rhythms that mesh to create something awfully dark on Blank Spell’s size-appropriate-titled 7”, which was released last month on World Gone Mad and Cruel Noise. Haunted, jittery guitars and fiery, shrieking vocals belt out incredibly unsettling melodies; like the dark clouds rolling in at unreal paces to blot out the sun over those aforementioned rhythms that act as the rain pelting the sides of a shoddy house, completely unpromising for relief—creating a constant setting of misgiving and torment. The Philadelphia band is able to create stormy scenes of horror literature, leaving listeners with very few good feelings, yet infusing such passion into their songs that ignoring them is impossible.
