For Rope Sect, darkness isn’t something to be avoided or overcome. Rather, it’s something to befriend and understand, to commune with at 3am, probably through the smell of cigarette ends and whiskey breath. On this debut album, these Germans have turned staring into the abyss into an artform in its own right, making it seem like an appealing, sensual thing through the medium of haunting, post-punk-tinged death rock. Opening with a reading from the book of Genesis detailing God’s own great flood, there’s a joy in hopelessness and strife throughout, shot through with a sense of style and cool. At times, this is music to wear sunglasses in the dark to. At others, it’s the toothpick-chewing, flick-knife sharp soundtrack to making a getaway from a bank heist in a hearse. Of these latter, i...
