Rosetta

Wake/Lift

Translation Loss Records 2007

Rosetta's new album struck me from out of nowhere.  Translation Loss has another exceptionally great release on their hands with Wake/Lift.  Imagine if Katatonia and Irepress had a bastard child together and you get some idea of what Rosetta represents.  These talented artists combine the thick and melancholic riffing of the former with the stark and clean melodies of the latter.  And they manage to achieve such a sorrowful combination that is both heartfelt and clinically cold at the same time.  All of Red Tooth and Claw's 12 minutes tug at your heart strings while pounding your face with cacophonous sledgehammer explosions.  Each song follows a eerily similar and evocative pattern of monolithic slow motion riffs of thick guitar chords interspersed with beautiful and fragile clean guitar lines lending the whole album an strangely calm and serene mood despite the utter heaviness and violence of the more rhythmic passages.  Lift (Part 2) is a dissonant and mechanical soundscape that would be right at home on a Skin Chamber or Godflesh album.   Whereas Wake makes me want to slit my wrists as the tears streak down my face, such is the feeling of tragedy and despair that sweeps over me when each sorrowful note escapes my speakers and pushes me further toward oblivion.  I can feel that these guys are right on the edge off exploding into a jazz inspired breakdown but somehow they remain as tempered as the fading rays of warmth from a winter sun.  The instruments on this album are all perfectly produced.  Though I wish Mike Armine's gruff vocals were a little higher in the mix as sometimes they sound a bit trampled beneath all those delay heavy riffs.  And this album has to have one of the best drum productions I have heard in a long time.  Rosetta's Wake/Lift is going to stay in the hollow shell of my now fragile emotions for a long time.  After hearing this album it is gonna take a long time to drag myself out of the depths of despair and heal the emotional wounds it has left.