FAILED, an enigmatic newcomer Cold Wave trio rooted in the Belgian underground music scene, emerges from the darker edges of post-punk and dark wave, combining stark intensity with a restrained, atmospheric tension, reminiscent of 80s trailblazers such as The Sound, The Chameleons, The Cure, Killing Joke and Comsat Angels.
The Ghent based band drops a DIY Official Video for their debut single “Sentimental”, produced by the Belgian musician and producer Mario Goossens, mixed by Greg Gordon (Oasis, Barkmarket, Helmet) and mastered by Fred Kevorkian, via the independent label Concha Records.
Dark and menacing chilly winds blow on the relentless hypnotic gait of punchy, a times shuddering, drum patterns and buzzy bass drones to pulse with a bleak grinding force layered with an obsessively wailing and searing strain, sharpened by glistening, heart-rending painful guitar melodies, to dissect a disturbing vocal interplay of groveling sinisterness and sweet agony, whilst an angry voice warns, “Hey you, don’t you get too sentimental” before noisily echoing into a vortex of mind bending silent screams and untold lies.
In the DIY visuals, FAILED walks down a straight path whilst a close-up of their masked faces hovers atop. The backdrop layers a country dirt road with a translucent sheet of nighttime city lights, and switches the transparency whilst a fast-moving subway car rolls like a cinema reel at the top of the screen. As the locations integrate, it creates a multi-dimensional view that looks ghostly and disorienting. Strategic editing shifts the saturation and inverts the lighting over the imagery to sync symbolically with the multiple perceptions of the soundtrack.
