I read that Swedish duo Citizend stride the boundaries between Americana, post-rock, and post-metal with Emil Gustavsson and Otto Nilsson sharing a common goal to break down barriers between archetypal genres. Their imminent EP `The Spiral` is intertwined with themes that focus on the profound complexities of life, a conceptual journey that spans a lifetime before the world meets its end. Teetering on the brink of an uncertain future, its narratives delve deep into an individual’s thoughts and experiences about the impending apocalypse, from the beginning to the end.
This extended play opens with the fairly haunting `The Beginning` a piano led instrumental that has a kind of “calm before the storm” vibe to it with a touch of the spaghetti western aural landscapes. We enjoy a part sung part spoken word oration over a tense recurring guitar riff on `Down`, a song that feels wonderfully reflective.
The band have shared that `Grinding Bones` “captures the relentless pressures of life, illustrating the intense labour, both physical and mental, required to navigate its challenges, a testament to managing uncertainty and obscurity in the quest for balance amidst life’s struggles.” It does have a more not aggressive but maybe confrontational feel with the chorus becoming delightfully mesmerising as the number evolves. There`s a deep contemplativeness and acceptance of the inevitable with `Drowning` which seems to be about the relentless challenge to survive.
The closing number `End of the World` does have a fairly dystopian feel about it as if we are experiencing the aftermath of an apocalyptic event.
`The Spiral` EP does emit a sense of unravelling or escalation as the tracks progress and evolve and although it has a dark and sombre outlook, I found joy to behold in amongst the gloom and am sure you will too.
Rating 8/10
