WALLACK: Black Neons (STONER): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Wallack is a four-piece band from France who offer us their third album "Black Neons". Putting bands in categories is necessarily simplistic but at first approach it helps to fix ideas. Wallack is himself affixed to the "desert rock indus" genre, an intriguing and very improbable style whose result is hard to imagine.

Wallack will start by presenting us with two opposite faces. First of all, the industrial side of 'All That Ever Been (Part 1)', 'Anxiety' and 'Black Neons', with a high density of electronic effects taking precedence over guitars that mainly play with long resonant chords and neutral vocals that condition a rather gothic background. The first impressions are unsettling, especially for those who are wary of anything synthetic, but the result is little by little appreciable, well helped by the suffocating and immersive ambiences of which the frenchs are the goldsmiths.

Interspersed between these three hyper-compressed pulsations come two different formats that relate to the second stylistic evocation. With their guitars, this time well highlighted by alternative and dry riffs, 'Century Boy' and 'Slaughters' feel the Rock of the stony roads and the dusty Stoner of the great expanses. It's hard to get away from the heavy atmospheres of the previous tracks and into something else altogether, but the catchy rhythms and rock energy are familiar landmarks that you finally hang on to. It's at the end of the game that Wallack has fun mixing these two aspects and, we must admit, he masters the perilous combination in 'All That Ever Been (Part 2)' and especially the successful 'Burnt'.

"Black Neons" is a strange record that leaves some reserved impressions, especially concerning the monotonous vocals, the sometimes shy melodic finish and the homogeneity of the whole. Beside that, Wallack manages to take the listener in his own universe and shows a certain audacity in trying to reconcile two a priori incompatible ideas, and this is positively confirmed on a third of the record. For these last aspects, and also to judge the evolution on the other points, it will be interesting to follow the course of this band. - Official website

WALLACK

BLACK NEONS

KLONOSPHERE

STONER