Sulfate Godzone (Flying Nun Records): Album Review

Sulfate has deliver an album of dark themes for troubled times. The album also has a heart of majesty – seductive more than openly confrontational.

Sulphate comes from the interaction of sulphuric acid with other chemicals. From a highly corrosive element comes indispensable products. Sulfate the band work with dark, corrosive and consuming energy which they transform with alchemy into expanses of beautiful melody.

Godzone was delivered through Year Zero of Pandemic, 2020. Its gestation preceded from seeds that were left after their debut album of 2019. Originator Peter Ruddell also fronts Wax Chattels. Works the synths and keyboards. Sings and blows some saxophone. David Harris is on drums and they have become a trio with the conscription of Harriet Ellis on bass, who was a guest vocalist on the debut.

The cover has them all dressed in white boiler suits like the Who when they were devastating Woodstock. A cow is representing Keith Moon. Why else is it there?

Bottle It In. The music appears to be massed elemental energy. Opens quietly and takes its time to build in intensity. As the song opens up, you feel you’re like flying over vast open spaces and landscapes. The drone melody slowly builds an atmosphere of anxiety and dread. Lyrics may give clues but remain riddles. The eyes are constructed by design/ There’s a growth on you/ It stays.

The approach is Minimalist music and a nod to the American school of avant-garde with the likes of Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Laurie Anderson.

Only Half Awake. The atmosphere is slow and quiet and a muffled organ plays. A slow incantatory chant. Walking around your home/ …splattered on the wall. It has the feel of a cathedral. Dark-robed monks and nuns circling around an Ingmar Bergman psychodrama. A saxophone honks and squawks dissonance. The tone and tempo is slow and ominous and a bit diseased.

The mood of the Lockdown times is invading the musicians and their reaction is to reorder the madness from within. Risky and bold and worth the price of admission.

Forgetting. I believe in what I see/ I react unfavourably/ I forget the rest of things/ If I erase what I believe/ If I erase all decency/ If I erase my memory.

I erase my memory.

The merged energy field of music rises slowly in intensity and so does the dread. Anguished voices become the chorus. Slowly but somehow beautifully it becomes a melodically howling Desert Metal storm.

Godzone. The song that sits at the heart of this album. Spoken recitation in a broad Kiwi accent from Ruddell. Sounds like a stage performance set to music. Talking about listening to a Test Match through thin motel walls, putting your hands through silage. The funniest being the warm embrace of Speights. Short saxophone riffs punctuate and lift the mood. Background vocals from Ellis sound majestic and heavenly. If this is God’s own then God is uneasy. The third act of the song is graced by melodic piano and strings. Similar to the long coda of Layla. Light and peace descend on the song like a blessing. A long dark cloud has lifted.

Fishes. Coming after Godzone and it’s a jolt of music grid energy. Howls of dissonance. Somewhere in Brunswick I was sick/ Trapped in celluloid with a clinical degree of objectivity. Must be Melbourne and this one has pedigree from Birthday Party and Boys Next Door. Metronomic riffs conjuring up beautiful compulsive melodies also touches on the likes of Suicide and perhaps, Cabaret Voltaire.

Dark themes and troubled times. The album also has a heart of majesty. Seductive more than openly confrontational as is Ruddell’s other band. The type of music that will throw off as many people as those that will embrace it. It is far from being harmless, and that’s what we like.

Rev Orange Peel