Detail from the cover art for We are Always Alone of a girl in a schoolgirl outfit, a purple and red light above her head.

portrayal of guilt’s Anthems Against False Hope

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We Are Always Alone is exposed to the undulation of the otherwise snapping winds, churning earth, roaring machines. How else to navigate the molten core of humanity’s incessant cruelty. 

Yet, in crafting music about the pain of mere existence, portrayal of guilt transcends as often as it crushes, as the most resonant extreme music that can only properly communicate when in complete sync. Each element serves the other and steps forward in kind and time, constantly swirling yet clear. 

Anthems for sinking ships, as if the tide itself was a choleric spirit drawing you down to a lightless ocean floor. There can be beauty in resilience against the hull-crushing depths of inked trenches, in surviving despite the chaos of an insatiable depression. 

Putting this anguish to waveform as a way of making it real, tangible, something to be cast away, though it always returns. The vocals swim through every shade of torment, there’s enunciation behind the teeth, leaving incantations against false hope. 

Complete submission to a fraying body wound with screaming nerves. A refusal to look away from the fungal rot at root. Weary words undergird the various voltages of charged barks, through which portrayal of guilt gives form to our daily torments. So that we might know them more fully. To dance with the void cheek-to-cheek. 

 

// Levi Rubeck is a critic and poet currently living in the Boston area. Check his links at levirubeck.com 

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Casting Deep Meteo, Music, Review
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