Koban
VIDE (Weyrd Son)

With the dog days of summer over and the fall monsoons on the horizon, the tinted postpunk on Vancouver duo Koban’s new VIDE EP might just help you transition into darker days. Grim from the get-go, the band lets bleakness bleed through the speakers on opener “401a”, with ominously oscillated synth tones underscoring Samuel Buss’s stony-voiced conspiracy theories. (“They don’t need a warrant when they come for you”). Even if the hangover he moans about on “Delirium” wasn’t induced by a tall bottle of Belgian beer, the track intoxicates with six-string noise and a blur of drum-machine beats that’d take Sisters of Mercy’s inhuman Doktor Avalanche to task.

While certainly appealing to fans of death rock’s early days, the bilingual bent that Brittany Westgarth brings to the table, raging against le système on “Détacher et Déguiser”, calls to mind the icy depths of contemporary darkwave crew Lebanon Hanover. With the last gasps of summer upon us, it’s about time we fully embrace the frightening frigidity of Koban.