Modder - Destroying Ourselves For A Place In The Sun

 

 

Modder - Destroying Ourselves For A Place In The Sun
Consouling Sounds / Lay Bare recordings – 2025
Metal, Industrial, Sludge, Electronic, Instrumental, Doom
Rated: ****

This year was my first time at Down The Hill Festival in Belgium, and it will surely not be my last. What a wonderful festival! Amazing location and setup and a stunning line-up! I will refrain from listing them all, but trust me, it was full of legends or yore and bands on their way to becoming legendary. And it wasn’t my first encounter with Belgian five-piece Modder, but it was the show that made me a mudhead. And I will get to see them again this Saturday at Helldorado Festival in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Modder, the revolution will not be televised, but the evolution of Modder will be all over this globe… 

Destroying Ourselves For A Place In The Sun is the next step in their remarkable progression. An album that fuses metal, sludge, doom, electronica, and industrial textures into a sound both primal and futuristic. I popped the record on and before opening track Stone Eternal had finished I had realized two things… One, my speakers might never recover. And two, Modder are absolute maniacs! And trust me, I mean this in the best possible way. The full-frontal assault on your auditory senses becomes this sensory overload that keeps punching you repeatedly. 

It starts out sneakily deceptive. Stone Eternal lulls you into a false sense of serenity, a peace you last knew drifting around in the amniotic fluid. Then, one minute in, the band detonates like a furious ancient god striking down on creation. Riffs hit like jackhammers on steroids, drums rattle your chest and electronics swirl around like radioactive goo. Aah tsunami! Let’s attack, let’s go! It’s a tidal wave of sound that somehow manages to install feelings of terror and hypnotize at the same time… 

And they just keep coming at you, with angular riffs, glitchy electrics, grind infused grooves. It’s as if Modder decided to play a game of chicken on you and among themselves. And none of the members is stopping, resulting in constant collisions of chaos and precision. And by the time you are headbanging so hard you can’t remember your name, you find yourself back in the amniotic state, as Type 27 opens with its ambient side to offer respite and a moment to catch your breath. A floating, post rock, droning start, which stands like a sentinel in the eye of a sonic hurricane. The Modder typhoon continues after a hot minute, and there goes your oxygen.

They never let up and from primal grooves and heavy metal seances, to drum and bass insanity and sludge devastation, it never seems a stretch for Modder. Ending with In The Sun, a closer that will leave you stunned, elated and somewhat fearing for your life. Some might fear it’s too fragmented, but that’s the point, it’s a goddamn sensory Rorschach test! Modder goes for the maximum, the maximalist and the extreme, relentlessly, and occasionally in a beautiful, post-apocalyptic, radioactive dead end alley kind of way. You can’t win. But Modder isn’t here to conquer, they are here to obliterate. And when it’s all over… You will press play again, against better judgment, because you want more… Another addict born. Another mudhead…  

(Written by JK)

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