Turkish Dark Wave / Post-Punk act Rain To Rust, founded by the Istanbul-based stalwart of the local underground music scene Mert Yıldız (voice, guitar, keyboards, programming), joined last march by bassist/keyboardist Ertan Aslan, is back, 3 years after the release of the band’s sophomore LP, “Stillborn Flowers”, mainly a leftover compilation/companion to the debut “Flowers Of Doubt”, with the lead single, “Tonight I Will Meet My Friends Who Died Untimely”, from the forthcoming full-length album, “Martyrdom: Eight Exercises”, via Swiss Dark Nights Records, accompanied by the minimalistic video by Çağlar Neçelik.
Lyrically, a lost soul admits that the past has become too difficult to reconcile, thus allowing any future hope to be dimmed out with unbearable feelings of guilt and pain.
The song, part of an 8-track album inspired by and dedicated to troubled iconic artists such as Adrian Borland, Richey James Edwards, Ian Curtis, Per Yngve Ohlin, Yukio Mishima, Peter Tyrrell, Osamu Dazai, Robert E. Howard, is a dedication to the Sound frontman Adrian Borland, who committed suicide in 1999 by throwing himself in front of a train, flows like the hypnotic looping rhythm of a locomotive, conducted by the lashing metronomic clattering beats of a drum machine, and relentless chugging bass lines, haunted by gauzy, spectral guitar strums, to roll over numb, listless vocal agony, disappearing quietly, into a haunting liminal realm of grey, disassociative gloom.
Black and white visuals, by Çağlar Neçelik, capture a dull scenic train ride, shot between Kocaeli (which is where
the band is located) and Istanbul (where the band used to be located), set against an abandoned decaying industrial backdrop to sync seamlessly with the tragic inspiration of the soundtrack. Urgent flows of motion rise and fall in tandem with the instrumentation whilst sudden red-stained imagery quickly flashes across the screen, inviting the viewer to imagine Borland’s final connection with the powerful, mesmeric, macabre momentum.
Rain to Rust’s third album “Martyrdom: Eight Exercises”, is scheduled for release, as a Digipak CD with a 16-page booklet, in late October 2023 via Swiss Dark Nights Records.
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