by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Has it really been three years since Nashville’s Tape Deck Mountain released Echo Chamber Blues? It has… I suppose time flies when you’re… well, alive. The quartet are set to return with the fourth full length, True Deceiver, due out April 23rd via Nineteen98 Records, which in line with “the times,” is the band’s heaviest and noisiest effort to date. The band, led by Travis Trevisan (guitar/vocals) have always played around with and subverted the shoegaze formula, shifting the sound in all directions, here that direction becomes increasingly dense and heavy, but the band stay true to the sound and it works wonders. The songs are patient, it’s not an immediate flood of volume and distortion, but a nuanced drift into the eye of the storm.
Having already released the first three singles “Screen Savior,” “NOMO,” and “Apocrypha,” the band are sharing another glimpse into the album, the duel guitar surge of “Hush.” Entering with a sharp ascension and swirling guitars, the rhythm section offers a hypnotic pulse, with the bass cutting through the dust and feedback, pulling the outward sprawl into focus. The band have gelled together over the years (with the same rhythm section returning from Echo Chamber Blues) and its immediately apparent as the wheels fall off of “Hush” and the band tear into ferocious burst of grungy shoegaze fury, shifting back and forth between mesmerizing and aggressive.