Temptress gave you the best soundtrack for your Halloween so why not make it a twofer by providing another one to ring in the New Year loudly in style. And yep, you read that right, New Hampshire’s own Temptress has given you not one, but TWO full-lengths barely two months apart. How lucky are we?
So what is The Ascent? A companion to The Descent? The sequel? Who cares! The one thing to know for sure is that it’s more of what fans have come to love from Temptress and brings more of that Industrial-tinged heavy to the masses courtesy of Jake Funk and Anthony Coy who, if we’re being real, are kind of the Bell/Cazares or Patrick/Radtke for a new generation because the magic that’s created when these two join forces is some truly powerful stuff.
“Lay Me In Roses” sets the tone with a moody Alt rawker that shares more in common with Stone Temple Pilots than it does Stabbing Westward and that’s fine with us. A lot of what follows is more of that and a different kind of Temptress than we might be used to. Sure, you get the driving bangers like “What Lies Beneath”, “No Looking Back”, and “Into The Fold” but for every one of them is a track like “Sink Or Swim” which dives into the deep end of Industrial excellence, taking the torch carried by Gravity Kills back in the day and really running with it.
Then there’s tracks like “All The While” which is easily your first must hear anthem of 2022 set to a veritable stomp and a constant throbbing that highlight’s Funk’s range shifting between a sweet vocal flow and anthemic sweeping passages. Further in, “Fiction Kingdom” is a crucial cruncher with Coy’s riffs front and center while “More Than This” transports listeners back to the mid-’90’s for a transcendent slab of throwback Industrial.
“Bitter Taste” is a somber thumper with impassioned statements on the state of the world, “K.NG” is a shreddy mood experiment that twitches and turns at a moment’s notice and then “Becoming” really leans into the Electro for a final sonic salvo that’s bookended by some vibrant vibes.
The Ascent is out on January 1st and you can pre-order it TODAY by heading here. For the latest on Temptress, follow them across the information superhighway when you click here, here, or here.