Inviting artists to describe their own music is more often than not both a colossal waste of time.
Yet it’s worth mentioning that Atlanta goth rockers Dead Register describe their debut as both “the fine elements woven together in the crafting of compositions” and “the effects of the bass on the bowels”. In truth, Fiber is every bit as opaque as the former suggests and as literally true as the latter, dominated by a thudding bass that will dislodge even the sturdiest of speakers.
With an average length of over seven minutes, each of the six tracks slowly unfurls as a propulsive goth rock voyage into bleak, sunless channels, building up into frenzied thrusts that land with striking power, exemplified on both the title track and the nine-minute opener, Alone. An unapologetic throwback, Fiber broadly surveys the synth-driven moodiness of late-80s goth, the stabbing crescendos of post-punk and noisy modern experimentalism with these lengthy and, at times, overly dramatic ruminations. Though hindered by a claustrophobic dearth of variety, Fiber is lavishly produced, compositionally ambitious and occasionally quite transfixing.
