Tag: Dark Synthetics (Secret Shame album)

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E26: Secret Shame

Secret Shame, photo courtesy the artists

Secret Shame formed in Asheville, North Carolina in 2018. Its members came from the local punk scene and the music they made together was, summed up by a quote found on one or more of its online accounts, “too punk for Goth and too Goth for punk.” But however its sound might be best described its style of dark post-punk struck an immediate chord with people that got to see the fledgling band and even the debut basement demo from 2016 revealed a band that was tapping into emotional spaces resonant with Siouxsie and the Banshees and Xmal Deutschland. Its songwriting quickly developed into the songs that would comprise its energetic self-titled 2017 EP and the 2019 full-length debut album Dark Synthetics. In that vital mix of death rock and synth-infused post-punk one could hear an emotional vulnerability that told stories of struggle and abuse sometimes couched in terms of cosmic horror. And yet there was a core of honest feeling that bled through the metaphors and abstraction. For the 2022 album Autonomy, singer Lena had been working from a place of wanting to not obscure her lived experience and emotional truth and one hears that reflected directly in the music too. It’s still beautifully moody and moving but less haze and more direct tonal expression. Also in the new set of music are more conventionally accessible melodies without sacrificing the grit and darkness that has made the group’s songwriting so compelling since its inception. Autonomy is an album by a band that has come into its own while also a demonstration of an evolution from where it’s been and hinting at further exploration of where the music can go when you feel like you can craft your art from a deeply personal place without needing to couch it in the stylistic terms of anyone else or their narrow expectations.

Listen to our interview with Lena on Bandcamp and follow Secret Shame at the links provided. The group is currently on tour including a date in Denver on Friday, November 25, 2022 at The Crypt with Voight, ilind and Verhoffst at 9 p.m.

Secret Shame on Instagram

Secret Shame on Facebook

Secret Shame Explores Breaking the Cycle of Self-Harm as Self-Defense on “Color Drain”

Secret Shame, photo courtesy the artists

Secret Shame’s new album Autonomy releases on October 28, 2022 and the single “Color Drain” reveals new dimensions to the group’s songwriting. It’s material for the 2019 album Dark Synthetics were well within the realm of the death rock wing of post-punk with songs that shed great insight into the nature of trauma, addiction and mental illness and the struggles in coping with aspects of human behavior that are often fairly normal reactions to the pressures of living in a dysfunctional society. “Color Drain” finds the group in a more warmly melodic phase of its songwriting but one whose tenderness is not used to cover over the raw emotions expressed. It is a vivid portrait of living with the instincts of having suffered prolonged abuse, emotional and likely physical, and how those ways of surviving the experience can cause you to shy away from things that might be good for you suspicious of the motivations of everyone around you because you’ve had to live with the possibility that any act of kindness or tenderness might be the prelude to getting in deeper into your mind to elicit responses long lost to the emotional calluses built up from becoming accustomed to abuse. But the song dares to ask after the ways in which one might come to see this level of toughness, of learning to survive as romantic and how that pain becomes the way in which you know you can still feel in recalling it as a source of dignity when real dignity can be found beyond that dynamic. And that clinging to that dynamic even after you’ve somehow left the abusive situation can be a way to reinforce the pattern in anticipation of its recurrence. When your mind is focused on that pain to the near exclusion of experiences that can better define your life can be a difficult prospect to face and maybe that method of coping served its purpose. This song questions the boundaries of that way of being and living and in the end suggests the possibility of being open to help from those who don’t have a selfish agenda in a path of disrupting this circle of self-oppression. Listen to “Color Drain” on YouTube and connect with Secret Shame at the links below.

Secret Shame on Facebook

Secret Shame on Twitter

Secret Shame on Instagram

Secret Shame’s “Hide” is a Cathartic Declaration of Resistance to the Stultifying Energies of Psychological Oppression

Secret Shame, photo courtesy the artists

“Hide,” the lead track from Secret Shame’s forthcoming sophomore follow-up to its fantastic 2019 debut album Dark Synthetics is a statement on embracing one’s vulnerability and the dangers of always feeling like you need to hide part of yourself as an act of self-protection. In the choruses, guitar riffs hit in a measured yet expressive procession and then bloom forth in wide circles of melody as the rhythm section carries a lot of the weight of the track with an irresistible momentum and energy. In the verses the instrumentation gives the room that is so yearned for in the lyrics that Lena Machina delivers with a focused introspection. The song speaks to anyone that has had to turn a personal asset into a mark of shame because of the bad faith behavior of others and of a culture that consistently treats normal and not inherently destructive human behaviors as an aberration even if it’s something as simple as wanting to have your existence matter despite where the focus of society’s unspoken system of rewards is placed. Not to mention how one can internalize this mindset when it’s the bulk of what’s presented to you in life. It’s a song of no small amount of nuance in its sentiments and musically it’s a step further in the post-punk darkwave direction more than hinted at on the first record and its superb blend of punk and its darker cousin. Listen to “Hide” on YouTube, connect with Secret Shame at the links below and look out for the group’s new album likely announced later in 2022.

Secret Shame on Twitter

Secret Shame on Facebook

Secret Shame on Instagram

Secret Shame’s “Calm” is a Deathrock Tale of Troubled Times Exorcised With Startling Emotional Honesty

SecretShame1_sm_crop
Secret Shame, photo courtesy the artists

“Calm” by Secret Shame is probably the state of mind this song is a kind of an emotional exorcism to attain given its narrative of chaos and anxiety among a circle of friends and associates. Comparisons to Siouxsie & The Banshees is inevitable as Lena’s vocals have a similar power and versatility. The rhythms are steady and appropriately brooding and the guitar minimal yet melodic and spidery after the manner of early Sisters of Mercy. But when the guitars, bass and drums sync up with the vocals, including the backup vocals, for the choruses the band alchemically attains an electrifying frisson that pushes the sound beyond what one might expect with the intentionally lo-fi recording. The latter actually contributes to a sense that this song could have come out in 1983 or today except that, while also reminiscent at times of Denver’s Your Funeral or a death rock version of The Vanishing, there is nothing museum piece about what the band is doing. It’s moods are introspective and its words unsparing yet poetic and compassionate in their examination of self and socio-political issues—aspects of the music that often seem underappreciated in a lot of dark post-punk. And it is that side of the songwriting that gives the music its powerful emotional resonance. Look for the group’s debut full-length Dark Synthetics out on Portrayal of Guilt Records (yes, run by the great weirdo hardcore band) on September 6, 2019. Listen to “Calm” on Soundcloud and follow Asheville, North Carolina’s Secret Shame at the links below.

soundcloud.com/user-477692705
open.spotify.com/artist/0QFIowD5P1Ej1Pb0gsZPzN
secretshame.bandcamp.com
twitter.com/ShameSecret
facebook.com/secretshameband
instagram.com/secretshameband