Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles

THE REVIEW

When I wrote the review for the predecessor of this “Crystal Castles” two years ago, titled “Crystal Castles”, which in turn followed “Crystal Castles”, by the Canadian Crystal Castles, I still had no idea what witch-house was. Therefore, I had to grope in the dark with daring definitions to try to describe a music with a sound that at the time seemed alien to me, but not only. Apparently, the term already existed; however, I only began to hear it used frequently later on, especially with the release, also in 2010, of “King Night” by Salem, crowning the legitimacy of a new branch of dark-edm that Crystal Castles had, if not quite given birth to, at least baptized in front of a large audience. It is no coincidence that in a sort of ironic tribute, one of the false leaks of this duo's third album circulating the internet was a .zip package containing said Salem album.

Starting with a chiptune-laden dance-punk that made me love them so much in 2008, it was precisely this spectral and unsettling evolution that illuminated them in the haunted house lit by the press spotlights, also charmed by the mysterious allure of Alice Glass, one of the many electro-punk chanteuses (a role still embodied today by figures like Caroline Martial of Kap Bambino and Rebeka Warrior of Sexy Sushi) who has reinvented herself as a ghostly master of modern black masses where, under the rhythmic pounding of sub-bass bells, she could be seen “levitating” above the heads of her devotees. Being a firsthand witness to one of these events, I can say that the experience, with the complicity of a constantly ultra-affected vocal amplification, was for me literally phantasmagorical, in the sense that it passed through me like a ghost: I remember nothing of it, such an elusive turn of the screw that I couldn't even grasp it and close it in the box labeled “disappointing” or the one labeled “extraordinary.”

In this highly suggestive ascendant scenario, the Canadian duo chose to continue their conversion project by consolidating the ranks and loyalty of their followers, promoting only the most convinced to prophets, expelling the moderates, and cutting ties with heretical imitators. The path is one of sacrifice, exasperation, and abnegation to an even colder and darker sound, a path that leads to the high peak of the mountain from which to reveal the only truth of witch-house.

House more in name, however, because it is techno that predominates in a record where thick keyboard blasts are omnipresent while the rhythmic section is functional and fundamental but not very interesting from an expressive point of view. In particular, strictly regular moments alternate in even tempos as in “Sad Eyes”, a dance-pop ballad that, despite its dark tones, recalls certain melodic sugaryness of the late '90s to more modern solutions like the dubstep on catacomb frequencies of “Kerosene” or the initially phat hip-hop in “Affection” then glitchy in “Insulin” and even handclapped in “Mercenary”. Likely influential in this case are the new black deviations of Clams Casino (and his dense dark-hop), araabMUZIK (with his chimerical “trancehop”) and the Swedes jj (authors of notable dreamy-kitsch regurgitations of old gangsta poses).

Regarding the general atmosphere of the work, we find ourselves facing an unprecedented homogeneity, the foggy hovering of black keyboards is perpetual while the variety of timbres is deliberately limited, and the dynamic-ritual character of the cult prevails over everything (especially in the initial siren that calls the faithful to gather in the silencing “Plague”) contrasted with the ethereal-contemplative aspect which is allowed only a threatening yet sweet warning in the final “Child I Will Hurt You”.

Relentless is also the voice of our priestess, increasingly transfigured and inorganic, which, combined with the deep hammering of the beats, becomes almost a mantra, and it is certain that the listener not initiated into this kind of sect at the strike of the tenth track, above the hypnotic straight bass of "Telepath," might begin to have hallucinations, humming blasphemous verses like:

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag,
Drifting through the wind
Wanting to start again?
Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin
Like a house of cards,
One blow from caving in?
Do you ever feel already buried deep?
6 feet under screams but no one seems to hear a thing
Do you know that there's still a chance for you