Year Of Metal #101: Rope Sect - Personae Ingratae
Recently, after having seen their name all over the place (on t-shirts especially), I listened to the most recent album by Sleep Token, one of the biggest acts in modern metal. They’re a band with a mythology, including a fictional backstory invoking a made up deity, complex costumes, and identities that remain shrouded. All of that is right up my street, but the music absolutely doesn’t merit it. That is to say, I absolutely hated it. It’s Imagine Dragons-ified metal, a ridiculous amount of pomp and lame funk affectations, cringey boring lyrics, going on forever, properly embarrassing. Hated it. Hated it.
I bring all that up not just to vent but because Germany’s Rope Sect have a loosely comparable approach to their brand. They too have a theme (theirs being: ropes), commitment to a bit, and they operate under anonymity. Unlike Sleep Token, though, what I’ve heard from them, particularly this 2017 debut record, is outstanding. There’s scope for debate as to whether this comes under metal - it’s more harsh post-punk than anything - but I’ve seen them reviewed on a couple of metal sites and they can certainly turn it up a notch, so we’ll go with it.
This LP’s not even half an hour long but it’s as dense and evocative as anything I’ve heard in a while. Whoever the shrouded members really are, all of them establish their identities from the off. The drums in particular are so heavy, walloping and bashing to add massive energy to opener “Fallen Nation”. The guitars are especially post-punk coded, but with a sharp, aggressive tone that sets them apart from the pack (I could whine about modern post-punk till the cows come home, but this record is a reminder of how fucking class the rather nebulous genre can be when it’s done right). And the vocals are perfectly disaffected in an unmistakably central European fashion. At several points I’m reminded of another odd, unclassifiable rock act I like quite a lot, Iceland’s Dead Skeletons. The singer’s often submerged in the noise of the mix, swamped in reverb, but not about to raise his voice to be heard, like he’s preaching doom from the back of the church hall.
Whether or not this is metal strictly speaking, when they want to they can put out something a lot gnarlier than the old school stuff we’ll happily throw up the devil horns to. “King Of The Night” is the most harsh cut on offer, with scraping, acidic chords and a relentless, thumping, crash-heavy beat. They can riff out, too - “Death Is Your Lover” has a colossal lead line, gloomy but muscular, like a more self reflective Stone Temple Pilots.
My favourite track of the lot is “Pretty Life”, which is maybe the least metal of the lot, but I love everything they’re doing here. The guitars almost sound Western-like. It could be the soundtrack for a gruelling trek across a lifeless, sunbleached desert, and the sudden lurching drums add another layer of drama to it. There’s not a lot of shape to this one, just layers of gothy cowboy shit tumbling over and over. This isn’t a great album for guitar heroics, but they almost forget themselves, tearing into two bars of what could have been a pretty ripping solo, before they remember the kind of band they are and shape back into those sinister, fried riffs.
For so many reasons I can’t see this lot breaking through like Sleep Token have, but it’s fair to say this music wouldn’t and shouldn’t be at home in the arenas the British act have somehow found themselves playing in. Aesthetic and vibe are all well and good but you’ve got to be able to back it up, and this record goes beyond shallow artifice and into something with real power.
