I've been following Brooklyn trio White Suns since stumbling on Anthony Fantano's review of Totem back in 2014 (and now you know what a basic bitch I am- talk about self-owns) but Dead Time is the first album of theirs that I've ever listened to with a critical ear.
White Suns is definitely a thoughtful band, but their style of noise rock is easy enough to appreciate on a purely aesthetic level that its reflective character can be glossed over in favor of allowing it to satiate your more tumultuous urges. This was certainly my experience of 2021's The Lower Way, which obliterated most thoughts in my mind while I leaned into a heightened state of anticipation for each violent, left-ward verge.
White Suns resembles a version of Big Black with David Fincher's sense of tension and release- a highly conscious approach to experimentation aimed at provoking perverse and sometimes contradictory responses from an audience. To me, they are master craftsmen of dark, ominous intrigue.
While the band isn't shy about showing their work, something that I discovered while listening to Dead Time is that it is more willing to disclose the band's intelligent, if diabolical, designs. More so than their previous records for sure. This is mostly because the record feels rawer and less rehearsed- even if when it isn't. But the fact that it feels this way is a testament to the band's skill.
There has always been a certain spontaneity to the electronic howl that White Suns emits and an unpredictability to the way that this devouring force envelops and partially dissolves the more trad post-hardcore elements of the band. But with Dead Time these facets appear less though a process and more as constituents in a constant state of crisis management. By which I mean, that the album doesn't swallow you whole... Decay and waste have already overcome you and you are only now coming to full horrific awareness of what has transpired. In other words, you begin your journey in medias res: in the belly of this beast.
For instance, "xenobiotics" sounds like it opens mid-song. Like you've arrived 10 minutes into the band's show and they are already well into their set. It kind of feels like you're missing something, but the sputter and shock of the electronics are instantly compelling, and you get caught up rather quickly.
"night pours in" similarly makes you feel like you've entered something already in progress. Something clandestine. Something that has put you in danger without your knowledge and now you only have a few precious seconds of awareness of this looming threat before it becomes inescapable. The song does this with trashcan-sounding snare intro that serves you up to a blast of guitar noise like a deer pushed before screaming pick-up truck- its big brown eyes barely adjusting to the glare of the headlights before the fatal impact.
There is a rather intense level of immediacy the band is going for on Dead Time, and it really works for me. If there is a thematic sensibility to this album I would have to say that it is one of expectancy- the foretelling of something bad. The hair-raising awareness captured by the bands gives their music the fragile but insistent quality of a live performance. A setting where sound and sensation mingle in the air like the smell of gasoline after a car crash.
It's incredible to me how White Suns can reach through your speakers and rattle your senses the way they do here. Almost like they've snuck into your brain through inception and set up a sonic warfare lab in the cleft between your lobes. It's hard to capture the level and sense of feedback of an in-person gig on a studio recording, but that the ironically named Dead Time's greatest asset- it has the dynamism of a live recording matched with the pristine sound range of a controlled studio environment. Chaos en persona, cultivated for impact.
