Too often in the past I’ve thrown around the phrase “very dark and very raw” in describing a band. Most of the time it’s hyperbole on my part, in order to tell you, gentle reader, to “listen to this shit.” Lately, however, I’ve abandoned the phrase. To dole out this praise too often weakens the overall message. With Austin’s Troller, I can say, with certainty and without hyperbole, they are indeed very dark and very raw. They’re so dark, in fact, that one could describe their latest album, Graphic, as a goth record, without the obvious trappings of self-parody applied to the term. The band’s latest video, for Graphic’s penultimate jam, “Sundowner,” is a brutal video for a brutal track. “Sundowner” could have been in heavy rotation on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, or playing late in the night for unsuspecting night owls and weirdos. Director Melissa Cha knows how to shoot the best visual accompaniment to Troller’s tunes, as she also helmed the video for the album’s first single, “Not Here,” and the band headbang their way through this colossal vid.
Graphic is available now via Holodeck. Head to the link to cop your vinyl, digital, and cassette copies and, for the CD heads out there, Crucial Blast has you covered.
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