- It’s been getting hard to keep up with the unholy enthusiasm of The Steady As She Goes. Brisbane’s one-man-goth-band, Tal Wallace, has been a prolific source of doomy, swampy, bluesy horror since he first started really putting stuff out, back in 2013. His release schedule reached a new, alarming pace, last year, when he groaned out two whole albums and a fifteen minute, standalone single, to boot. Given that, the whole year between his last, Warlock Radio and the just-released Caldera might have some wondering what the hold-up is.
I’d say it’s because Tal’s been using the time to learn every trick in the gothic playbook, but, as anyone who listened to Warlock Radio will know -and really the same applies to any number of his recent records- he’s been trying out new styles for some time and spitting them back at us even faster than he’s been putting out records. At any rate, we’re a long way from the near formless murk of early albums like MONOLITHS or Dangerous & Dead. It’s almost a shame, because there was something truly revolutionary going on there: pushing swampy, grinding blues beyond all limits of structural integrity and letting something primordial spill forth.
It’s difficult to call Caldera derivative because it’s so diverse, but it does have more reference points than The Steady As She Goes of yore. Opener Oxygen Destroyer kicks in with a chirruping drum machine and a bouncing groove that pervades the warm fuzz of the guitar. Tal’s voice is only semi-perceptible, echoing above and behind all the other lines. So, instead of oozing blues, it’s pumping industrial rock.
Drowned In Serpent’s Blood is a spotlight for Tal going full Nick Cave. He, like Nick, badly wants to be a bass, but the ringing upper registers demonstrate a very serviceable baritone that you’d never have guessed at, a few years ago. Charm & Low Cunning savagely cuts away the sweet vocal and throws on a long, repetitive beat for Tal to jam over. It’s a little bit kraut and a little bit Bolero, performing a seductive and slowly twirling flamenco dance.
Chrome Cromlech reprises the Cave impression, although it sounds a bit more like the Tal we’ve known. Its major stylistic innovation is a banjo line a-la Deliverance, doing a do-si-do with the synthetic organ. Eaten By The World uses its eight-and-a-half minutes to deploy a slow, sonorous beat and play off treble sweetness on the piano against the low skuzz of the guitars. Tal treats his voice to sound very trebley and percussive, really maximum deathrock. All those ingredients together have an unsurprisingly Swans feel.
Caput Mortuum is a treat because it sounds like The Steady As She Goes I used to know, but polished to its highest sheen. The guitar rings out against the low, cavernous vocal and booming indistinctness of the kit.
If this record only hinted at krautrock before, it’s time to go properly motorik on Phobos:Deimos, which sounds a bit like Killing Joke covering Neu!. Given the dour mood, firmly established by this point, the cut is almost ludicrously upbeat, probably explaining its positioning in the track list, but it is also surprisingly infectious. Caldera saves its last, giant offering for a John Carpenter tribute. True Names Of The Forest is slow, synth-infused soundtrack rock and while you wouldn’t want to lead with it, it’s a pretty great way to finish, especially given the post-rock build to that huge, roaring climax.
One of the few niggles I have with Caldera is how resolutely, defiantly lofi it is. While that’s appropriate for many things here, others -like those pleasantly Nick Cave vocals- are obscured, made the lesser for it. It remains to be seen if The Steady As She Goes has mastered that, along with everything else, in six months, when the next release drops, presumably. Whatever else you might say, It’s impossible to listen to this record and deny the breadth of Tal Wallace’s knowledge of every stylistic inflection within the broad church of gothic music.
- Chris Cobcroft.