Caving in on us with basslines one moment and clashing into textured walls of percussive noise in the next, Empire of Dis provides an unsettling walk among the sonic tombstones that is almost certain to provide goth metal fans with a special fix as the season changes from summer to fall.
URL: https://newjacobinclub.com/
The New Jacobin Club experiments with the limits of melodicism in “The Priestess” and “Gloriana Engine,” the depth of poetic realism with “The Hunter” and “Lord Henry Steps Out,” physicality in “Blue Serpents” and “What is the Night,” as well as old school camp in “In Crimson Snow” and “Empire of Dis,” resulting in a patchwork of pressure and brilliant angst where we’re least expecting to find it, but I wouldn’t call this campaign an explicitly left-field affair. If anything, there’s something rather classical to the way this album comes together, with some moments in the tracklist bringing to mind the progressive tendencies of goth’s second wave, and by the time we reach the end of the record it feels like we’ve experienced a lot beside The New Jacobin Club. They’re familiar enough in tone to make a lot of this genre’s diehard fans curious right from the moment they press play forward, but it’s the adventurousness of their play that provides the most thrills and chills in Empire of Dis.
There’s a lot more to goth music than simply embracing a certain clichéd look, and The New Jacobin Club has no problem reminding us of that with songs like “Slenderman.” It’s the muscle of the music here that recalls the likes of Bauhaus more than My Chemical Romance, but I’d stop short of saying that tracks like “What is the Night” or “Behind the Veil” are meant to be an homage to a legendary sound no longer relevant to experimenting listeners.
The melodies are still present in this material even beneath the brawn of the music, and I credit the production quality for really ensuring our ability to appreciate the accessibility of the mix. There’s no part of The New Jacobin Club’s sound that comes off as artificial or crudely constructed; in fact, the clarity of the mix makes it even easier for us to zone in on specific elements that might have slipped under the radar in another, less than intricate instance.
I think The New Jacobin Club was trying to do a lot with the release of this album, but most prominently they wanted to establish some sense of connection with an underground audience growing increasingly wary of crossovers in 2022. They demonstrate a lot of endurance when they get into the recording studio here, but perhaps even more importantly, they show us that they aren’t limited to the single-threaded element that has become one of goth’s most criticized barriers in the last forty years.
PRE-ORDER ALBUM: https://newjacobinclub.com/empire-of-dis-pre-order
This is a band that wants to chase after duality and contrast freely with “The Priestess” or “Behind the Veil,” and I think the best way for them to do so would be to maximize the punky side of their sound the next time they record new music. The aggression in Empire of Dis is just waiting to come undone with the right combination of tempo and tone, and I hope to hear what The New Jacobin Club can do when they explore this side of their artistry.
Chadwick Easton