Remember riding your bike when you were like 12, turning on to an unfamiliar street, and encountering your first experience with death metal blaring from the inside of the house that had the coyote/wolf blanket hung in the window as a curtain—then pedaling home in fear to watch something wholesome like Saved By The Bell, or is it just me? Hmm. Well, the obnoxious sound of Sinai Beach isn’t too far off from that frightening, confusing moment we all experience when we find ourselves asking, “Where did I turn awry?”
The effort is clear. Sinai Beach displays their ’80s-inspired, Depeche Mode electronics, heavy, overly dramatized Danzig stage voice and speed metal Pantera drums, all within the limits of their religious beliefs, of course. But the purpose on the other hand, is not at all clear. The elements that were “rad” back in the day, like the metal looking font on the cover, the scary artwork and the synthesizers in the intros and outros, were only cool back in the day. When that day was, I can’t really say, but I do know that today’s underground music has evolved into something more than cliché, borderline ’80s metal-hair bands, and should require a lot more than wailing and hard hitting drums to make a home in anyone’s CD collection.
With lyrics like, “hell is all around me, or at least it seems to be. I look to the side of me: emptiness. I look to the other: suffering and loneliness. I wonder, ‘can it get any worse?’” we can’t help but ask ourselves, “CAN it get any worse?” Well my friends, I’m afraid it can. And this album proves it.
