Night Ritualz (aka Vincent Guerrero IV) offers much to chew on, weaving, according to his bio, ‘Tejano influences into his songs, blending English and Spanish lyrics’ into darkwave/synth punk tunes – a stylistic hybrid which draws on Depeche Mode, Deftones and At The Drive-In, blurring the line between dark wave, electronica, EBM and post-punk to create a genre he calls ‘Fuck Wave’.
This eponymous debut album follows a fairly prolific run of self-released singles in the last couple of years: indeed, 8 of the album’s 12 tracks are previous single releases. I’m not sure if this makes this a compilation with some additional tracks, or if you might view it as him having written an album’s worth of material that’s been drip-fed to the public as it happened to build and maintain interest.
The 80s electro influences certainly dominate the sound, particularly with the vintage drum machine sounds: the mix really emphasises not simply the big, reverby, drums, but the dominant snare – I always felt it was something of a shame that this has fallen out of fashion, and it’s something so many acts influenced by the 80s miss.
Guerrero defines ‘Fuck Wave’ as “anything horny, erotic and sensual that just makes people feel good,” and there’s no shortage of that energy on display here, but equally, there are some quite sensitive, reflective moments, too: ‘Sharing Skin’ has a hint of early Killers about it, but with a substantial dash of shoegaze, while ‘Hace Tiempo’ has a brooding undercurrent to its urgent groove.
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‘Make Me Feel’ bears the hallmarks of goth with its four-square bassline welded to a thumping drum machine with crystalline guitars, but the synths are certainly more Depeche Mode circa 1984 than ‘Disintegration’, and actually, the fact the sound is quite sparse, with clear and distinct separation between the instruments is quite refreshing in a way.
‘Take Me 2 the Crib’ lands between DAF and Man 2 Man with its club-friendly groove and whip-crack snare, while the noisier, more industrial ‘Cross My Heart’ turns down the sleaze and cranks up the aggression, and ‘Turn ‘n’ Burn’ is a full-on hard-edged dancefloor stomper.
‘Night Ritualz’ is nothing if not varied in its approach to some well-established templates and tropes. Much to chew on, indeed.
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