Post-punk band SOFT KILL has just released their new impressive, adventurous eight track album called “Choke”. The record showcases the band as one of the pinnacle bands within the present day post-punk/dark rock genre and presents the band’s best work to date. Fueled by a unique touching drive, “Choke” is another magnum opus this year. It show much evolution in the field of the genre and the formula containing some truly magnificent melodies, lyricism, and arrangements, it maintains is just beyond belief. Great record worth a lot of your time. Enhance your autumn evenings with this pearl now.
Photo by Sam Gehrke Photography.
Portland, Oregon’s SOFT KILL began in 2010 by releasing one of the most highly regarded post punk albums of the last ten years “An Open Door”. Their fourth album “Choke” is scheduled for release on Nov 4th via Profound Lore Records. Founding member Tobias Sinclair (ex-Blessure Grave) joins Conrad Vollmer (Warm Hands) on guitar, drummer Maximillion Avalon (Chromatics, Antioch Arrow, Get Hustle, Atriarch) and Owen Glendower on synths.
The eight song suite “Choke” comes on the heels of 2015’s sophomore effort “Heresy” which was seen as a much more claustrophobic and oppressive album than “An Open Door”. “Choke” by contrast, incorporates a greater depth of songwriting, texture and melody. Soft Kill has discovered a depth of invention and creativity with “Choke”, vast and engaging in scope leaving the listener with an enduring and melancholic bliss. Warm, confident with lush guitars, “Choke” teems with melodic songs, generating urgency and vitality, elevating all that is potent in post punk, building impressively on their previous output. “Choke” is the culmination of years spent perfecting a unique sound, crafted and haunting songwriting that places Soft Kill firmly in the canon of the genre.
Rooted in influences such as the Chameleons, Wire and The Sound the album branches out, pulling delicately from the foundational elements of Cocteau Twins and Spaceman 3. “Choke” places the listener deeply under water and leaves them gasping for breath, placing them above hope with tracks like ‘On The Inside’ which features the vocals of legendary Mark Burgess of Chameleons. The song draws from the first wave of post punk and slips seamlessly into the cascading and ethereal elements of early shoegaze. The opening track ‘Whirl’ bleeds together the pop sentimentality of New Order with the dazzling Sheffield sound of Pulp. Lyrically “Choke” speaks on topics of loss and longing, and the choices we are all asked to make. Soft Kill will be touring extensively in support in the upcoming year.
“Choke is an incredible tour-de-force of dark and moody postpunk that will prove to be one of the best albums of 2016.”
–Cvlt Nation“Soft Kill have been channeling the original goth era for a few years now and for their latest release they signed to Profound Lore, a label usually known for metal bands… It’s good stuff.”
–BrooklynVegan“Dark, melancholic, echoey… Choke is the emotional equal – atmospherically and lyrically – to any funeral doom band.”
–Decibel“Soft Kill wake up post-punk ennui…”
–Clrvynt“Cool shades of ambience and broad strokes of sonic texturing.”
–Exclaim!“One of the most outstanding new post-punk bands of today… romantic and moody.”
–Ghettoblaster“Slow instrumentals build up and make way for a quicker pace, replete with insane amounts of reverb… The deep, dark vocals are absolutely killer, a nod to the band’s name.”
–Impose“Less of a tribute to the ’80s goth sound, and more of an album filled with guilt, oppression, and out-and-out misery.”
–Dead Rhetoric“An autumnal soundtrack of memory and lost love… Draped with such dense layers of atmosphere that its best songs become transportive experiences.”
–Culture Creature
