DALETH / BLUE SHIFT CDr

Daleth further develops its trademark lo-fi sludge, a hammering wash of overdriven drums and guitars that lends the texture of speakers squarewaving into rupture. The songs progress confidently, often shifting to angular, atonal, quasi jazz-inflected avant-metal, lilting post-rock hazes, and crescendoing passages of subwoofer-wobbling trudges and stutters. All in all, Daleth produces a sonic tension between exhaustion and mania, and while Blue Shift deals in similar psychological themes, it is through the use of quite different materials--namely, cacophonic, beatless violin riffs recorded in the red. From piercing shrillness to anxious quietism, Blue Shift produces tones of neurosis so palpable that someone needs to redo The Shining with these seizuring violin lines accompanying Nicholson's mental collapse.