Sextile by Sarah Pardini
Breathing new life into death rock may sound like an oxymoron, but the genre has successfully evaded mainstream viability since Berlin hit the top 10 with Take My Breath Away. What kind of self-respecting goth and goth-adjacent purveyor of the many shades of black can get their groove on to the most prominent hit off the Top Gun soundtrack?! I mean, come on? Tom Cruise is the least dark dude and the most prominent poster boy for teeth whitening and jogging on God’s green Earth.
Death rock never disappeared; it just festered and waited for the perfect concoction of post-punk sexy sleaze and danceable beats for the downtrodden soul. These days, the genre is resurfacing with acts like Twin Temples, Vision Video and Sextile. Each one of these acts takes the idea and runs in a different direction, resuscitating death rock from its crypt.
Sextile lean into the danceable and dark attributes, prompting industrial party vibes that provoke the aroma of a smoke machine in a dark club with PVC and leather-clad humans sweatily grinding to the tunes. Taking cues from synth-punk and dark wave with an indifferent sneer, founding members Brady Keehn (vocals, guitars, electronics) and Melissa Scaduto (drums, vocals, guitars and electronics), along with Cameron Michel (guitar and keyboards) and Lia Simone Braswell (drums), might have been right at home in the heyday of Chicago’s Wax Trax or the halcyon days of Brooklyn’s early aughts electroclash revolution.
The point, dear reader, is to get you moving with the joie de vivre of being young, sexy and moody. Living for today, for tomorrow, we die vibes, a complete Dionysian oeuvre on display. Sextile are less of a band and more of a contingent, a cult put to music, the promise of eternal life as sexy dark monsters moving through the night, devouring the willing and unwilling alike. A primal sound that scares the straights and arouses the kooks, equal parts Brian Eno, the Cramps and Christian Death, shake and strain into a cocktail coupe of Italo disco.
Sextile and Donzii play 8pm Friday, April 19 at Gramps in Miami. sextile.bandcamp.com ~ Tim Moffatt
