“Perpetual dread unhinges us. Threats real and imagined indistinguishable. The multitude stirs – and it hears the siren call, but not the alarms that sound. Enthralled by the specter of a life brutish and short. The deal with the Leviathan has been remade. We are right to fear – the many and the one.”
That is how the two-man formation All Are To Return introduce their new single “A State In Fear“, which we’re premiering today. Set for digital release on November 28th, it follows the band’s self-titled debut EP in 2020 and their second EP, AATR II, which detonated one year ago.
With those previous releases the band thematically revolted against the multitude of societal prisons, both more and less obvious, that confine and degrade human existence. The new song itself seems to echo a line from the introduction to the first EP, which characterized its grim perception of “life naked to the brutality of a state in fear.”
At least based on their previous writings, AATR‘s worldview is bleak and bitter, but anger comes through as well, perhaps born of pessimism about whether anyone will really wake up from the mass dread and anxiety that have become an effective means of subjugation. It’s no surprise that they don’t resort to conventional means of musical expression when the whole point is to portray the confinement of what has become conventional, and then take a sledgehammer to those walls.
In the new song, the sounds balance on knife-edges of abrasion and clarity, of seduction and menace, of haunting gloom and incipient frenzy. Tension eerily builds in the music, along with emergent mechanical upheavals, and a self-mutilating voice screams with terrorizing effect. The overarching impact is nightmarish.
Eventually, a slow and brutal beat arrives, heavy enough to crack pavement, in the midst of futuristic swirling and glittering electronics. The blend of beguilement and punishment, of siren calls and oppressive trauma, becomes strangely hypnotic, even though those vocals remain ruinous.
All Are To Return is:
F: Bass, Drums, Guitars, Vocals, FXs
N: Synths, FXs
You can pre-order “A State In Fear” now at Bandcamp, where you’ll also be able to hear and acquire the band’s first two EPs.