ASSASSUN releases the Darkwave album Sunset Skull
The newest project to come from the prolific Alexander Leonard Donat is ASSASSUN. Discordant, less sung than flung into existence and stuck hanging on the aether as a crooked ornament, this hits differently than anything else.
Donat hammers a harsh sound here, and as he shouts his universe alive, it is not so much distilled rage as it feels like bitterness; a cold, wintry disdain that has crystalized into an upturned collar, a spurned world. Indeed, the tracks focus on irrational, long-suffered emotions such as spite and disconnect, and each is underscored with an arrhythmic severity as punishing as the feelings themselves. The distortion accompanying each melodic theme echoes the plodding resistance of human nature as it scrambles to make sense of such spiritual states – there is a confusion and deep hurt buried deep beneath the seething, tucked in the folds of every song’s cracked heart.
Donat’s projects are always an unexpected journey through the darker fragments of the human mind; he is adept at questing through the most difficult of unconscious states. It is difficult to say what genres are even represented with the ASSASSUN project – perhaps a new genre should emerge for Donat alone, for there is surely nothing else out there that sounds like anything he does. ASSASSUN is challenging, but in the sense that it is rewarding to grapple with its leitmotifs and find connection with its disharmony. Much like scaling a treacherous mountain pass to behold the splendor of its surrounding vistas from its summit, it is an expedition well worth the sweat and toil one puts into it.
Listen here:
https://blackjackilluministrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sunset-skull
