Sermons By The Devil - Baptism of Desire

Released: April 11

Bringing another album filled with his signature blend of beats and abstract electronics, Sermons By The Devil expands on his established sound with Baptism of Desire. What instantly stood out from the first few seconds of listening was the drums - they sound incredibly beefy and defined with a perfect little crunch of compression on them. Some of the tracks really push this as well, like the oddly named "Ginyp/Gnopp" with those classic Roland drum sounds that are pressed and fortified to the point right before they begin to distort, hitting a nice little sweet spot. Something else that I really liked about this particular track was that it emphasizes the rhythm over everything with just a touch of a 303-ish bass line coming in to support the rhythm. 

While all of the fun little synth blips, chops, and tones are there on this album, Baptism leans heavy on the beats as the previously discussed track exemplifies. But as we move on through album, we get the alien-sounding "Mutant Drill' that pushes the percussion to near its breaking point in intensity. The snare and kick on this track are both super crunchy, giving the track quite a bit of weight. And while it does have synths on it, you're not really going to find a lot of spacey and drawn out tones here. Instead, almost every synth here just becomes a part of the rhythm, beeping and blipping in perfect accent to the percussion with the others just becoming fun delayed ear candy. 

The final track gives us the most synth driven track on the album with more laid back beat, somewhat reminiscent of the opening track. But this change up gives the synths this perfect amount of space to breathe, to the point were every little echo and textural anomaly can be heard in all its dark-tinged beauty. Putting all of this together, we get an album that has a nice amount of variety without deviating too far away from the established sound, making a perfect progression on previous work.