Review Summary: 'The year is 2942. 925 years after Gang's debut album "925 'TIL I DIE" was released on M8s records. 925 years since these strange beings consolidated their grip on world power.'
GANG base their musical aesthetic on the principle that the creeping unease felt at your worst never truly leaves you. They are the soundtrack to your anxious thoughts at night that never let you sleep.
For the last three years, GANG have honed their sound, refined their psychedelic touches, and amped up the heaviness to the brooding groove-doom that awaits in
925 ‘Til I Die. Previously released tracks have been re-recorded so the record can exist as one whole statement, one that crashes and burns, never rising, always suffocating.
‘Messiah’ melds Beach Boys-vocal harmonies and winding instrumental passages to paranoiac effect, which segues into ‘Enough Nothing’, an always-moving lurch into the woods in Wonderland, that plummets into a cacophony of crushing bass and fretboard heroics. The oppressive atmosphere this segment of tracks creates, clouds the rest of the album; sometimes waning, never dissipating. Whenever there appears to be a moment to breathe, the beast is only in the shadows.
Witness ‘Skinny Dipper’, which starts as a quaint, mellow psych-ditty, the doom-laden distortion in the middle souring the rest of the track as it finishes as it starts. ‘Breath Before Death’ also continues this motif, while also highlighting a key fact about GANG: they know how to write a pop song. Even as it dives into a swampy, murky descent, it’s still catchy as all hell.
Even when ‘2B Abused’ and closer ‘Dead’ envelop the listener in thrashing despair and shrivelling anxiety, there’s still a deeply tongue-in-cheek notion of pop songcraft. But even so, never doubt GANG’s earnestness. They just have a different definition to you. Just as they, and the rest of the M8s Records’ roster, are redefining how a modern rock band should rock out.
