Here’s to one small blurb I wanted to cover for a while. Back in 2021, Los Disidentes del Sucio Motel got some mileage out of RMR for their Polaris record. Not the easiest of fares and somewhat difficult to get into. But it was worth it and sufficiently out of the box to keep our interest levels up and sharp.
But since that particular record hit our review pipe, nothing much happened. So, very late in 2023 and in full listing season, LDDSM launched Breath at the public. At the worst possible moment, I might add. Unsurprisingly, the EP lost itself in RMR’s busy schedule late in 2023 and never saw the light of day again until now. You see, we just covered the acoustic version of a Spanish band. And a sliver of the latter’s pig-headed offering always reminded us of what our dissidents did some time back. So, the RMR crew came back full circle to give Breath a chance to shine. Because their first acoustic and (partly) unplugged piece is a feisty one, too.
Three of the five original tracks – The Plague, Horizon, and Blood Planet Child – indeed stem from the aforementioned Polaris. Z, as in zombie, got borrowed from the gritty 2011 piece Arcane that we may still cover one day. And then they threw the single From 66 to 51 into the fray for good measure. A woozie, country-laced Post Rock piece on acoustic wings that seems to describe a journey on too many hot highways in between shows in the US. But the filet piece is and remains Blood Planet Child. This is where grit and grime meet true emotion, and all members of the band lustily chime in. Singularity in an acoustic sound galaxy.
LDDSM put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this unplugged production, no doubt. Breath mostly employs acoustic instruments, tastily disjointed multilayered vocals, and drums used only sparingly. Albeit that the thunder barrels sit way too high up in the mix, which often gets in the way. And it does show that this band ain’t used to unplugged productions. The thoughtful and almost overloaded arrangement apart, the vocalist, for instance, still often slings his high-pitched vocals as if this were your usual rock or metal piece.
In other words, the studio folks simply stripped the rock and metal out of the mix and let it roll. The (astonishing) fallout of this is that their ‘acoustic’ version sounds raw, unvarnished, vulnerable, and almost unfinished at the same time. And this saddles this memorable EP with a special allure that made us return to this particular pot o’ sonic sins a few times too many.
Label: Klonosphere Records | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 1 December 2023