San Francisco-based dark noise rockers The Tunnel made up of Sam Black (bass/electronics), Michael Scott Jacobs (drums), and Jeff Wagner (voice/guitar), are back with the new 4-song EP “The Nightfall” on King of Sticks Recording Cooperative, following the recent 8-song gatefold LP/digipak CD compilation of the trio’s 2018-19 digital EPs, titled “Shapeshifter”, via Denver’s Forbidden Place Records, and the split 7″ single “Candy Viper” with Oakland’s post-punkers Thought Leaders.
Unlike what a group from the Bay Area might suggest, the band’s moody, brooding, angsty and noir-ish post-punk sound is fractious and edgy, dense and chaotic, but imbued with its own cohesive inner logic, amid rugged melodicism and dark introspective lyricism, sitting somewhere between the seedy primeval swampy muddy groove of the Scientists and Birthday Party, the industrialized noise racket of Big Black and Jesus Lizard, the deafening feedback-pop of the Mary Chain and APTBS, and the haunted driving post-punk tension of Bauhaus and UK Decay.
From the second slow-paced part, yet not less intense and visceral, comes “Ashen” that quivers, clatters and howls along with thick and aching layers of self-righteous anger, bitter desolation, and fierce restrained intensity into uncomfortable murky and gloomy realms of haunting past memories, steadily grounded by taut punchy drums and a deep warbling ominous bassline smouldering underneath, lit by lustrous cold shards of reverb-filled chrome strings and sinister baritone inflexions, ricocheting into a swirling burst of hopeless sparkling guitar wails and shrieks, and intoxicating dramatic mood swings, echoing desperate, impassioned whiskey-soaked male vocals, gasping frustrated rage and isolation, trapped in the cold discomforting and claustrophobic inner darkness of his soul.
Check the video, by Jeff Wagner, for the second songs from the EP “Reckoning”.
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