Hardcore house beats along with party rocking melodies and beat drops, emerging ‘Wrong Age. Wrong Race. Wrong Gender’ as a new album by DAMIEN.
From Australia Bundamba, the solo artist released his second album on May 27th,2022. Conquering numerous genres; the album swings around modern music in general, whereas it contains industrial, rock, pop, and nu-metal.
The album contains multiple vibes and sounds, due to the numerous genres within; some tracks are fast-paced and high-key industrial such as ‘Porn Star’, while other ones are punky as the track ‘Dreamer’.
The album’s concept is unified across all tracks, DAMIEN is confronting the listeners with an anti-cliche and societal orientation against a certain cult of age, race, or gender as the artist said “The album title is a criticism of how cultures have often given preference to people based on things outside of their control, such as race, age, and gender. At any given time in history, there has been a usually self-appointed idealized group based on race or age, etc and a despised group.”
Vocals on the record are in a megaphone theme -as the one politicians use to promote their ideas- to promote and assure the listeners that what is being told/sung is an announcement and the new concepts they should acknowledge and pay attention to as if they were in a political conference.
The first track on the record -which was previously reviewed by Rock Era Magazine- is ‘2 out of 10’ discussing the judgmental rating process people usually make in evaluating others.
Came up next a track titled ‘Porn Star’ engulfed how our society’s sexual expectations were formed based on the porn industry, and how they influenced our orientation.
The third track on the list is ‘Melbourne Afternoon’ a bit quieter track than the previous two, with a spacy background melody and a distinctive vocal theme, giving a psychedelic signature to the track.
Next on is ‘Body’ a dafty pop kind of track, closer to the ones of the famously known Daft Punk. A more quiet track with a smooth dark melody.
And then comes up ‘Human’ an electro-industrial punk rock track with weird correlated vocal lines, with a scary theme and a pop-up synth. The track lacks a few melodic anthems and tunes to give the track more depth in sound.
Jumping off to the sixth track ‘Love Myself’ with clearer, softer vocals, this track speaks of unbalanced relationships and the fact of underestimating one’s self in a toxic relationship.
And the final track ‘Dreamer’. For me, this is my favourite track on the record for the amount it holds of self-esteem and realistic emotion. Clear vocals and only guitars until nearly the last quarter of the track give you a vibe of someone throwing away a musical Molotov at all the clichés in the society and burning them to the ground.
‘Wrong Age. Wrong Race. Wrong Gender’ is a perfectly written album musically or lyrically. And the transition between genres gave the record a stunning comprehension. And the distinction of sub-genres adds excitement and breaks the norm in sound.
Listen to the album, and tell us what do you think.
