German deathrockers Rope Sect premiere the new track „Mementote“ at Deaf Forever magazine’s website. The track is the second to be revealed from the band’s highly anticipated second album, Estrangement, set for international release on May 17th via Iron Bonehead Productions: Songpremiere: ROPE SECT | DEAF FOREVER (deaf-forever.de)
Since their humble debut in 2017 with the Personae Ingratae EP, Germany’s Rope Sect have quietly built a formidable canon of work ever since, punctuated by their massively hailed The Great Flood debut album in 2020 and further enhanced by the stop-gap mini-album Proskynesis in 2022. While an undoubtedly unique entry for Iron Bonehead, Rope Sect’s eerily minimalist deathrock speaks to the darkness in everyone, whether they’re full-on metal or far from that. Simply, power and poignancy come in many forms, and Rope Sect have secured theirs with an idiosyncratic sound that continues to find new listeners across a wide spectrum of experience.
Following from the more electronic textures found on Proskynesis, Rope Sect return to refine their sound further with Estrangement. A full-length work comprising eight songs in 43 minutes, Estrangement is suitably structured for maximum immersion: twilit in every respect, each song stretches out to generous lengths, revealing a staggering sense of space that’s sensual and suffocating in equal measure. Indeed, Rope Sect return to those fertile fields of haunting introversion found on The Great Flood and plough them with just the subtlest hint of sparkle without losing their unapologetically lo-fi approach; credit those clarified-but-not-too-much sonics to the mastering by Mario Dahmen at Liquid Aether Audio. As such, Estrangement feels comforting for its familiarity, but its secrets likewise plunge deeper into the human experience, hushed yet portentous for their quiet magnitude.
As always, Rope Sect underpin that sonic portent with thematic lyrics. Estrangement vaguely is a kind of mental prequel to Personae Ingratae story-wise, exploring the thought why people (would) feel estranged and seclude themselves from society and form their own sect. „It can be seen as a reflection of all the ruins we are surrounded by,“ state the band, „the increasing reign of pessimism over optimism in a world that seems to have doomed itself as well as expressing a sense of not belonging and the connected urge to escape all this and live by your own rules in your own little world, passing all the warning signs of human kind going astray.“ The album fittingly / dramatically concludes with the pulsing resignation of „Rope of the Mundane Love,“ featuring guest vocals by King Dude.
As singular as ever and walking their own path with paradoxically ever-more-fervent steps, Rope Sect paint a poignant picture of Estrangement.
