Graphic

2016 release. On their acclaimed eponymous debut, doom-laden Austin, Texas, darkwave outfit Troller introduced a lush, lugubrious sound combining heavy synths, slow-motion rhythms and haunting vocal melodies, woven into infectious, brooding blasts of dark-pop perfection. The songs seemed to emanate from some cavernous subterranean chamber, drenched in reverb and surrounded by shorter pieces of bleak ambience and grinding noise. A sinister, often abrasive edge gleamed from that early material, but it also featured some of the most stunning darkwave anthems heard in ages. Troller takes that sound further on Graphic, their first proper full-length album. The group's sensuous, dread-filled pop is encrusted with huge, otherworldly synths and distorted, grinding bass roar, rumbling across crawling drum machines and washes of glacial Carpenterian electronics. Gorgeously gloomy hooks shine in the dimly lit corners, as Amber Goers's soulful, utterly bewitching vocals haunt Troller's tenebrous depths. And while the band's noisier tendencies are more subdued this time around, there are still surges of corrosive sound that materialize in dense feedback and jagged chords juxtaposed with the album's more beautiful passages. Combined with Troller's provocative imagery and apocalyptic undercurrents, this produces something far bleaker and more unsettling than anything else in the realm of dark synth-pop today.