On their debut
A Thousand Hands,
Sextile pull off a difficult feat: giving death rock some new life. They combine influences (the occult, psychobilly) that can seem campy at best in ways that feel genuine instead of gimmicky, and channel the shadowy flip side of Los Angeles' eternal sunshine. Full of descending riffs, martial beats, and outbursts that light up the darkness like flares,
A Thousand Hands sounds both fresh and familiar; its chain-rattling claustrophobia recalls contemporaries like
Sextile's Felte labelmates
Ritual Howls, influences like
the Cramps,
Christian Death, and
Coil, and even dark electronic acts such as
the Haxan Cloak. At first, the band teases listeners with atmosphere, as on the shivery title track (which takes its name from an image that appeared to keyboardist Eddie Wuebben during meditation) and "Flesh," where surf-rock riffs collapse as if they've been pulled into an undertow, before throwing listeners into the abyss. Like the best of their forebears,
Sextile make misery sound thrilling. Brady Keehn and company are equally anguished and exhilarated on the gloriously thrashy "Can't Take It," "Visions of You," and "Smoke in the Eye," where Keehn wails "This is love!" like it's a blessing and a curse. The band carves out different shades of gloom elsewhere on
A Thousand Hands, spanning the
Eno-like ambience of "Romance" to the stunning "Mind's Eye," on which drummer Melissa Scaduto's vocals cast a sensual and hypnotic spell. Some of the best songs appear near the end of the album, such as the rawly catchy "Shattered Youth" and the sweeping drama of "Into the Unknown." While this approach is more than a little perverse, it fits
Sextile perfectly and only underscores that there is plenty of depth to
A Thousand Hands' darkness. ~ Heather Phares