Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is a kind of humility, of earthy secular cool attached to the isolated and melancholic. Without melancholy, existence is just a set of lines running between extreme happiness and the dark of despondency, melancholy allows the colouring of all courage to be realised, it is the rest that allows the brain and heart to gather strength and become unified in its passion to take on the best.
Melancholic Rock is delightful, it is the point of the journey in which self-confidence can pound on the ears of the listener and remind them completely that there is a middle way, another way in which to drive home the passion and it is one that sits half hidden in The Color Morale’s new album Desolate Divine.
The Rockford, Illinois band’s outgoing aggression conceals the melancholy well, the sound, hard hitting and punchy sits more recognisably in the songs on offer but the tangible hold of veiled secrecy is also there and it is the fascinating combination of both that make the poetic truth sing in the background but with the allure of a Siren stranded on a shore eyeing souls to destroy.
In the band’s fifth studio album the anger is emotionally captivating, it insists itself upon the listener as if standing upon a one foot flat ledge, 100 yards in the air and with the wind starting to muse if it could make you wobble and fall headlong into the ocean below, it is a firm and explosive, it is rigid in its delivery but flexible enough to avoid the snagged rocks and the snarl of the ocean’s heart. Melancholy is an art not suffering and it is deep and beautiful, even when you have to interweave it in between anger and frustration.
In songs such as Clip Paper Wings, Trail of Blood, Home Bittersweet Home and Misery Hates Company, Color Morale maintain their stance of producing great music and the sincere persistence that they hold true in each song is devastatingly content.
A tremendously punchy aggressive album, one filled with the drama and overwhelmingly sensitive; The Color Morale hit the right tone in the Desolate Divine.
Ian D. Hall