Album Review

Dead Confederate – Sugar

• 6th Sep 2010

Doing justice to any musical genre doesn’t just require the musicians to have the required knowledge, attitude and ‘look’ of the particular genre they are associated with, but their own set of morals and ethics at which their music dictates and how their music is enjoyed. So genre tagging a band as ‘alternative psychedelic country grunge gloom merchants’ can’t be said for most bands out there.

The Dead Confederate however fill the criteria needed for this amalgamation of musical styles with their new album ‘Sugar’. One singular thing that this band do very well is to invoke a heavy, dense sense of introverted darkness.

The album has space and volume. Reverb soaked guitars provide angst against a vocal cacophony straight out of redneck Americana, whilst mid-paced drums add their own sense of awkward terror.

The album is quite downbeat. It almost seems on some tracks such as ‘In the Dark’ and ‘Mob Scene’ that the music is on the edge of chaotic destruction. But give it time and the album drops in suspense and flatters the listener with a surprising U-turn towards the almost poppy ‘Giving It All Away’ and the angelic, slow burning spaced out anthems of ‘Run From the Gun’ and ending track ‘Shocked To Realise’.

The moments of sheer grunge terror are sure to win over any hardened devotee of music tinged with dissonance and a controlled thoughtfulness, whilst the stripped back, much laid back anthems that shock the listener into a wide-eyed trance should do well to ensure that The Dead Confederate are one of the bands to watch out for this year and they should feel proud at having a sound uniquely their own and uniquely powerful.