Last Evenings on Earth is the apocalyptic second album by Melt Yourself Down, evangelical hawkers of DNA-rearranging post-punk exotica. Snatch your passport and let this hydra-headed serpent take you for a dizzying, continent-hopping voyage around a globe spinning ever more rapidly off its axis. If the band's self-titled debut was a series of feverish nocturnal visions beamed from a sub-Saharan desert where voodoo spirits were raised from dusty catacombs, then this is an even headier trip. Here the rhythm has migrated to the city to merge with the pulses and dark currents that run through it. Capturing the raw energy and wild-eyed intensity of the Melt Yourself Down live show, this music speaks in tongues. Casts spells. Here language disintegrates, replaced by something deeper, more primal, delivered with fire-dancing fury by fervent frontman Kushal Gaya. Like snake-charmers mesmerizing a writhing pit of vipers, "The God of You" entrances, and by "Jump the Fire" the listener is ready to abandon all worldly possessions. Feel the subterranean rhythms of urban life in "Dot to Dot." Smell the sweat flecks scattered by swinging mops of hair in the reverberating basements and back rooms of New York, London, Rio, Lagos. Watch the silver morning sun shatter the sea as "Yazzan Dayra" builds itself into a state of rapture, like the Whirling Dervishes of Sufism or the circle pits of hardcore punk before them. In both sound and aesthetic, Melt Yourself Down have celebrated migration since day one. Theirs is musical unity through movement and sound. Trans-international. They number in their ranks some of the finest musicians of their generation and Last Evenings on Earth condenses the human experience down to a series of shamanic rituals. It's a journey both internal and external. This is musical trepanning. Musical exploration. Musical everything.
Last Evenings on Earth is the apocalyptic second album by Melt Yourself Down, evangelical hawkers of DNA-rearranging post-punk exotica. Snatch your passport and let this hydra-headed serpent take you for a dizzying, continent-hopping voyage around a globe spinning ever more rapidly off its axis. If the band's self-titled debut was a series of feverish nocturnal visions beamed from a sub-Saharan desert where voodoo spirits were raised from dusty catacombs, then this is an even headier trip. Here the rhythm has migrated to the city to merge with the pulses and dark currents that run through it. Capturing the raw energy and wild-eyed intensity of the Melt Yourself Down live show, this music speaks in tongues. Casts spells. Here language disintegrates, replaced by something deeper, more primal, delivered with fire-dancing fury by fervent frontman Kushal Gaya. Like snake-charmers mesmerizing a writhing pit of vipers, "The God of You" entrances, and by "Jump the Fire" the listener is ready to abandon all worldly possessions. Feel the subterranean rhythms of urban life in "Dot to Dot." Smell the sweat flecks scattered by swinging mops of hair in the reverberating basements and back rooms of New York, London, Rio, Lagos. Watch the silver morning sun shatter the sea as "Yazzan Dayra" builds itself into a state of rapture, like the Whirling Dervishes of Sufism or the circle pits of hardcore punk before them. In both sound and aesthetic, Melt Yourself Down have celebrated migration since day one. Theirs is musical unity through movement and sound. Trans-international. They number in their ranks some of the finest musicians of their generation and Last Evenings on Earth condenses the human experience down to a series of shamanic rituals. It's a journey both internal and external. This is musical trepanning. Musical exploration. Musical everything.