Premiere: Brooks Thomas burn through the ‘Darkness’

The ties that bind are often indestructible, especially those that thread us together with someone else on a deeply raw and emotional level. But then there are those shredded straps of an addiction that can suffocate, cutting off oxygen for a kind of high that won’t let go. Whether literal or metaphorical, seductive habits creep up on us, and there’s even an excitement in it, too. At least, that’s the directive of Bronx alternative rock troupe Brooks Thomas‘ new song “Darkness,” a throat-scratching refrain fueled by a twisted dalliance. “The time is right for us to sin / I want to ignite your excitement / Tonight I been hyped off the darkness,” sings Danny MacDonald, whose mournful voice tangles with Colleen Cadogan’s in charred extremes. “Don’t tease me / I won’t think you’re easy so come on and please me / The darkness just leaves me so blind.”

While the devotion skips in captivating sashays back and forth, a devilish fog overtakes their consciousness in an vibrating effect that’s chilling, apocalyptic even. “Darkness,” a cut from the band’s new record, Poison (out September 21), depicts fragility and uncontrollable “codependency and alcohol addiction,” says MacDonald over an email to B-Sides & Badlands, premiering the new song today. That sinister edge powers up the ignition on grungy candle flickers that light up the skull thanks to fellow bandmates Rocky Russo (bass), Adrian Colon (drums) and Arianne Lombardi (guitar, vocals). With a previous record of folk music, Cadogan and MacDonald desired for something dirtier, more primal and the kind of unnerving electronica that bends genres and leaves you breathless. Textures plotted and three-part harmonies unlocked, the band mounts an alarmingly animalistic, nearly inhuman, creation, as if a musical manifestation of Frankenstein’s monster. They break apart their loneliness, addiction-possessing forms and the journey outward in shards that fit together in mangled wholes but standalone as self-contained observations.

“[The song] is an admittance of the excitement of metaphorically burning alongside someone or some people. It was the first song written for this album, and it kind of opened the floodgates for the rest of the content,” MacDonald continues. “When we were recording Colleen’s vocals for the bridge of the song, she was having a little trouble hitting one of the parts, and I said, ‘Maybe you just can’t do it.’ The next take, she nailed it perfectly. We learned an important lesson that day. Just tell Colleen she can’t do something, and she’ll figure out how to do it.”

Poison dissects not only the towering, perhaps detrimental, influence of addiction on self but that of a relationship that’s too deep to end now.

Listen below:

Here are the band’s upcoming shows:

9/22 – New York, NY – Mercury Lounge (album release show)

10/20 – Brooklyn, NY – Pine Box Rock Shop

11/09 – New York, NY – Rockwood Music Hall Stage 1

Photo Credit: Ben Kaye

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