Algiers : "s/t"

I have been searching the inner -webs for this album for sometime now, so happy to finally have my hands on it. Matador records is releasing it but not doing much else to promote it. Good thing for the band they have a unique sound that should set them apart.  They formed in Atlanta, but like most other good music Atlanta doesn't know what to think of it so they relocated to varied parts of the world meeting up again in New York. They do take string synths that are slightly goth and set them as a backdrop to the gospel dirge. The singer's husky soulful voice has more rawness to it than I expected and it sits in a bizarre juxtopostion to the noisy industrial clanging that it emotes over. Sometimes it sounds like the rest of the band is going to go along with him and start busting out some 60s soul from within the din.

Sometimes the gospel takes the focus and the dark electronic elements just haunt the background, with the groove of "And When You Fall" making it seem like this lines are more defined than they actually are. I has previously heard the chain gang pulse of " Blood", which was one of the song that sold me on these guys in the first place. They pick up the pace for "Old Girl". It's another song where it's hard to hear where the gospel and electronica begins and ends, though here the mixture comes across more rock n roll. One of the other songs that sold me on this band is frantic funk kick of "Irony, Utility, Pretext". The shadowy cloak this electronic gospel is draped in varies in shades from song to song. One of the darker shades paints "But She Was Not Flying".
"Black Eunauch" is the only song that has taken several listens for me to still not have formed a conclusive opinion about. The albums only ballad "Games" gives the album a wider dynamic range. A fitting comparison to this band would be they fuse dark electronica to gospel in the same way Chelsea Wolfe has done it with folk. The big chorus filling up the background of "In Parallax" pushes the gospel in your face, but lyricallY I think any religious imagery is being used as a metaphor. If you have any inkling in regards to my spiritual path based on my writing for Cvlt Nation then it should be clear that if this was a christian band I would not give them the time of day. The album ends with a untitled piece that is an outro combining noise with what sounds like a gospel radio station. Without a doubt this is an excellent piece of work that was well worth the searching. It gets a 10.

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Algiers - "Blood" from Algiers on Vimeo.