Review Summary: A little bit of polish goes a long way.
Street Sects’ debut is, um, a
difficult thing to love, to put it politely. The combination of Shaun Ringsmuth’s pummeling, distorted instrumentals with Leo Ashline’s nigh-unintelligible screams felt more akin to walking on hot coals than listening to an album. Still though, those who managed to wrap their arms around the layers of barbed wire surrounding
End Position found it to be one of the more tortured and fascinating rock albums of 2016.
Well, at least I did.
Rat Jacket feels like a refinement of the duo’s debut, as they make their sound just a little more accessible. The major problem with that album - its overreliance on frenzied bursts of noise - has completely evaporated. Distortion has become a tool in Ringsmuth’s arsenal, rather than a crutch. This is obvious from the outset - the opening track“Blacken the Other Eye” gradually crescendoes into a sudden explosion of high-pitched synthetic whines and Ashline’s primal screams. Like Ringsmuth and distortion, Ashline no longer relies solely on screaming, in fact, he spends most of this EP singing cleanly without forgoing any of his original potency. It’s important to note that, despite this streamlining, the duo don’t lose sight of what made them so interesting in the first place. Their dark, foreboding atmosphere is still very much intact; the instrumentals still hold a surprising intricacy to them, despite their aggressive tendencies. Now, however, they’re focused on slowly ratcheting up the tension rather than pummeling brutality, and in doing so, Street Sects hone their established sound into a sharper and far more effective point.
