This is the debut album from Tripsitter, a post-hardcore band from Austria.
The promo blurb describes this as a mix of black metal, shoegaze, and hardcore, and this description sets the scene nicely for the 44 minutes of music you’ll find on The Other Side of Sadness.
The band’s music is emotive and filled with harsh atmosphere. A hardcore/post-hardcore base is added to with shoegaze influences and peppered with blackened elements, resulting in songs that are clearly cathartic in nature for the band. Post-metal melodies are used on occasion, adding resplendent colour to music that’s otherwise layered in shades of black. Tripsitter tear through the songs with both energy and intensity, but that doesn’t mean that reflective calmer moments don’t appear too.
There’s a keenly-felt vulnerability on this record, in addition to the blatant aggression and heaviness. In fact, this vulnerability and inward-facing introspection is woven into the very fabric of Tripsitter’s aggression and heaviness, infusing it with a sort of nervous energy as it erupts from the speakers. At other times this bravado falls away completely, and we’re left with softer, ambient moments; completely stripped of dark intensity and anguished screams, we see the heart of the band as they contemplate their own inner worlds and confront their emotional landscapes without the armour of blackened distortion.
The Other Side of Sadness is an enjoyable and emotive journey into the heart of darkness, one which returns you at the end of the 44 minutes unscathed, but not necessarily unchanged.
A recommended listen.
Wonderbox Metal 