Athens, Greece-based Indie Shoegaze band, made of Joseph Powell (Lead Vocals, Guitar, Lyrics), Dean Jola (Drums, Percussion), George V (guitars), Aki Rei (guitars, keys), with Alex Bolpasis on bass, returns with “Cerberus”, the first excerpt from their forthcoming sophomore album “As Passive Aggressive As It Gets”, via Fine Records.
The group slips back into the fold with a piece of immersive suggestion, overwhelming and dragging you along in shimmering, feverish waves of rampant, fizzing electricity, making everything in their own way scraping, enveloping, bracing and highly emotional, amidst floats of stirring pensive abandon and bursts of flooding distortion.
When a person can’t separate themself from their family’s expectations, a loss of feeling, color, wholeness, and control forces them to give up on building a life.
Tensile pinpoint sparkling guitar chords, washed in sad swelling synth drifts, trigger a relentless build-up of urgent tight drums and taut humming bass lines, surrounded by reverberating star-twinkled melodies alongside serrated obsessive strains, while detached, regretful, layered vocals anxiously suffer, slowly being consumed by sweeping fuzz-laden swarms, to overflow into an achingly sharp and blinding catharsis.
A wonderfully uplifting Official Video created by Vasilis Kehagias syncs Youth Valley performing “Cerberus” on a rooftop with the soaring inspiration of the soundtrack. Cloudy pastel editing smooths the rough edges off the band as an alternation of environment from blue skies to strobing darkness takes hold. Symbolic imagery shows a beautiful white horse galloping, blooming flowers, suggestions of love and hate, and hands turning into angel’s wings, to bring forth thought-provoking insights and hope alongside the poignant lyrics. A brief moment when the words “Cola Ad?,” display behind the band in concert, points out one of the many toxic influences used by corporations to manipulate and harm society for profit.
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Photo by @notyournovalover
