Pay no attention to the picture.
[Video][Website]
[5.12]
Patrick St. Michel: Rare are the YouTube comments that end up being helpful, but one left for “Plague” did help me get into this track a bit more. “Sounds like the Silent Hill OST : )” commenter zatorek4 wrote, and that brief sentence is pretty on point. Crystal Castles dabble in the same tension between silence/noise that makes the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack such a compelling listen even when separated from the video game itself. The duo’s decision to bury Alice Glass’ vocals deeper in the mix is the smartest move here, as it allows the quieter segments to float by and the noisier sections to achieve their full, buzzing impact. Crystal Castles learned a valuable lesson that also made the Silent Hill franchise such a popular video game franchise – it isn’t about the big scare, but the unease before it.
[7]
Anthony Easton: Less Neuwachstein and more Otranto, with all of the fear of ambition, family curses, and death via head gear that implies–genuinely uncanny.
[9]
Kat Stevens: I have to say I prefer my haunting three-chord banshee dirges with a lively Major Lazer trot-beat underneath it. OP-di-dop-di, OP-di-dop! Don’t you think?
[5]
Alfred Soto: Halfway between an immersion tub and and a dance floor, between dream pop staleness (e.g. “mysterious” female figure with sinister intentions) and a Rihanna remix. Who is this for?
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: If you’re going to bury vocals, you need to make sure you have something interesting to bury them in.
[4]
Brad Shoup: I appreciate the feint toward house mysticism, but this sounds not unlike a rave in a wind tunnel. Also perfect for that summoning you’ve been putting off.
[5]
Jer Fairall: Are the words rendered in gibberish so we don’t notice that they really say nothing? Is the music this distorted so we don’t notice how little is actually going on here musically? Is it all so calculated to sound like shit so we don’t notice just how shitty it all truly sounds?
[2]
Will Adams: There might be something interesting happening in this witchy mammoth of a track, but I can’t be sure. Apart from the thudding kick that cuts through the mix, everything – a wall of white noise, screaming vocals, and piercing synth chords – gets thrown into a long tunnel. It sounds fine a hundred feet away, but perhaps it has more to reveal from five feet away.
[5]