Dana Sterling
Photo Cred 📷 : @therecanbeonly1
There are portents that you can sometimes hear in new music that just indicate complete surrender to it, I'm assuming it's not unlike lightning striking you. Within the first 30 seconds of Dana Sterling’s debut EP “Departure” I felt my hair begin to stand on end, my tongue tasted copper in the air and my flesh felt as though it was ready to radiate pure energy. What followed was one of the the finest pieces of Screamo music I'd heard in years.
“The Space We Keep” immediately seized my attention, jockeying two dueling vocals, one: an overflow of impassioned shouting, the other a shattered glass expulsion of rage, sprinting across discordant and calculated guitars, into a triumphant finish. Something very special is being captured here. There are moments that fill the Suffix-sized hole in my heart I've had for about a decade, with riffing bass lines that call upon the spirits of Welcome the Plague Year, incisive lyrics on the violations of the homeless, domestic abuse, the failings of capitalism, class warfare, the racial disparities and police violence that plague this country, all swirling and alive, like that aforementioned bolt of lightning has been transmuted to sound waves and brought to our ears.
Hailing from Minneapolis, the band wrote through the early stages of the pandemic as the George Floyd protests swelled into the public consciousness and the seeds of the current worker unrest were taking root. This feels especially potent as I sank into the gallant riffs of “Calm Simple Sweet”, the scaling shrieks urgently climbing, that classic moment of a lone guitar strumming while the drums pick up a steady and determined pace I’m met with a heartfelt delivery of spoken word peaking and crashing down into a howled and driving chorus of Where did you come from? Why is this home? What is the point in refusing to grow? When bitterness turns to bloodshed and control, before releasing and winding out quietly. With “In Violence We Trust”, a melodic yet uniformly intense call to action, the only thought I had upon it's conclusion was “I need to hear this again immediately”.
Heavy, powerful and biting, this 6 song EP is a blistering and borderline perfect offering of superb, contemporary Screamo with powerful social commentary but more importantly, the glimmer of hope that things can be better as long as we hold on to one another. We excitedly await whatever the band has in store for us next, and we would like to echo the message they've left for us: Solidarity. Always.
Check out their Bandcamp here : Dana Sterling
Writer : @letsgetpivotal
Editor : @just_reidz
09/05/22
