Sin Offering: Guilty 12"

Sin Offering: Guilty 12” (Beach Impediment Records) Three of hardcore’s best current record labels—Beach Impediment, Sound Grotesca, and Side Two—team up to bring us the debut vinyl from Sin Offering. I’m tempted to start by calling Sin Offering a “death rock” band and noting how much they remind me of Christian Death, but (despite the fact that I just did it) I feel like leading with that sells Sin Offering short. There’s a lot of unoriginal, super budget-sounding death rock / post-punk out there, but Sin Offering doesn’t feel like it’s coming from the same place as those bands. One big way they separate themselves from the pack is by infusing big doses of metal and hard rock into their sound. Take the main riff to “Ingenue,” which wouldn’t be out of place on a Dokken record. While that riff is the most rocked-out moment on Guilty, much of the record is chunky and metallic, somewhere between Amebix and Samhain in its balance of heaviness, rocking propulsion, and gloomy atmospherics. Alongside that focus on atmospherics, most of the album lumbers forward in this zombie walk tempo that keeps everything tense and menacing. The vocals definitely recall Christian Death (the official blurb uses the phrase “girl Rozz Williams”), creepily moaned as if they’re the singer’s last words, and while you won’t walk away from your first listen humming the vocal melodies, they contribute a lot to the haunted vibes. The lyrics are great too. I also love Guilty’s packaging, which expands on the music’s hauntological themes with creepy Victorian imagery and fonts, layouts, and paper/printing choices that feel like wedding invitations from a dark mirror world. While Sin Offering’s music might not be as immediate as face-ripping hardcore or sugar-rush pop, they’re great at building an immersive world and using their music to take you somewhere new and exciting.