Daughters – You Won’t Get What You Want

8.7/10

Daughters is an industrial metal band from Providence, Rhode Island comprised of Alex Marshal (vocals), Nick Sadler (guitars), Jon Syverson (drums), and Sam Walker (bass). They released You Won’t Get What You Want via Ipecac Recordings on October 26th, 2018.

The album starts with “City Song” which sounds like an ode to Godflesh, while the singer does eerie spoken word over it, almost incantation-like before it turns into a dizzying industrial machine. We then get into the demented track that is “Long Road, No Turns.” It’s a dizzying, dissonant ride into insanity with heavy guitar effects, tribal grooves, sliding bass riffs and anxiety-ridden vocals. It feels like someone strapped you in a chair and started spinning it.

The bass tone on the album is on the dirtier side, which can be found in the intro of “Ocean Song” and “Satan In Waiting.” The aforementioned song also has a more uplifting passage before descending back into madness and gloom. The vocals throughout the album sound like intense spoken word. It almost sounds like slam poetry. They convey feelings of dismay, apathy, and loneliness while giving glimmers of hope through some uplifting passages.

This album truly represents a descent into insanity, because as the album progresses it becomes more dizzying, heavy, and distorted (other than the cleaner interlude album entitled “Less Sex”).

”The Reason They Hate Me” has a heavy Rob Zombie-vibe in the instrument section, which is very infectious while “Ocean Song” turns into a mountain of unease, with the dissonant progressions making you feel like something is wrong, it made the hairs on my neck stand up!

The ending track, “Guest House,” showcases the singer finally screaming “let me in, let me in” while the track removes your sense of sanity every time you hear “knocking and knocking and knocking.” This track truly feels like a final attempt to regain some sanity, but as the album title suggests… you won’t get what you want.

I only have two cons about this album. One is the amount of intense spoken word. It gets a bit monotonous at times, it has its charm but the singer has the capacity to get out of that comfort zone and start screaming more because he showcases it on the album. The second con (no points lost though), is that this band is a quartet and there’s a lot of synth passages. I don’t know who’s doing them in the band, I’m guessing it’s the vocalist.

All in all, it’s a great listen if you’re in an intense mood. This album is the industrial version of a psychological thriller, which is amazing!

Written by Peter Lountzis
*edited by Danielle Kenedy