sace6 “Brutalist”
Music has always been more than just delightful sounds. It can often illicit emotions, core memories and transport you into meditative ambiance. Whether soft and sensual, or heavy and destructive, music speaks in languages not found in books but within your soul. The debut album from sace6, Brutalist, explores how far the standard boundaries of music can be pushed for art.
Previous EP Limerence set the project’s modus operandi that is expanded here. Create songs using a non common word for an emotion, a feeling, then let it grow organically. Brutalist already suggests this is going to be a creative giant forged in suffering.
In this particular case, we follow our heroes lyrically and musically, through the stages of falling in love, becoming addicted to their presence, to the gut-wrenching realisation of lies, the self-destructive bargaining and eventual hurt and betrayal.
Opener Besotted leans into sace6 love of RnB, with angelic soulful vocals as the song bursts into slow down-tuned riffs before Reverie, – with lyrics of ‘it’s been thirty seconds since I let you cross my mind’ and ‘don’t you leave me daydreaming’ – builds the musical storyline of falling for the fantasy. Sensual, sexual, even erotic as the beat pushes slow yet hard.
Basorexia continues the intense storytelling of sace6 as he croons ‘I need you now’, Noah Thomas’s guitars begging to bring the huge breakdowns to signify the overpowering emotional pull between the two characters. ‘I will take you home while everyone is watching’. You can tell why they land with a certain demographic. Personal, impulsive, and carnal.
Allured is where the first signs of our hero starting to break, still a sensual RnB journey yet the breakdown is more like an electric shock to the senses. More desperate, even clingy. Something that lands even harder with Ego as the slow grind switches to a descending groove as the ego gets hurt. The song and lyrics intertwining so that even if you don’t know the words, you feel the raw emotion.
The bargaining of Covet slows it down again but the pervading feeling is of being lost, which Uneven explores as sace6’s character collapses, hanging on when they shouldn’t.
What is so clear in this story, this concept, is the genius that everyone can relate and there are now songs for each stage of a breakup to dive into.
The driving, slower rhythm of Dolorous matches the grief, the bad dream to be woken from, Nepenethe the state of numbing oneself as sace6 laments ‘give me something to forget’.
While in the first half of the album the music is soft with breakdowns littered throughout, the second half is the opposite. The destruction of one’s happiness coming through in down-tuned riffs and forlorn lyrics.
Fabulist is as heavy as the crushing weight of feeling betrayed. The anger is called out through blast beats and full-on metal riffs.
However, it’s the finale Perfidy that it all comes together in one epic ending. All the previous elements of styles – RnB, pop, metal and more – crashing against each other in a way that shows the diversity of sace6. A poet, a singer, a storyteller who doesn’t just use words but sounds to unlock your deepest wants and fears.
Brutalist is more than an album. It’s a story we’ve all been through, uncomfortable yet passionate. A story of love, loss, and betrayal. It’s a companion, an antidote, to when we go through this and comforts you that you’re not alone. This album is more than music, it’s emotions. It’s life. A shadow of their sace6’s soul and their remarkable art.
Album Review By Iain McCallum
