On their debut album, Deepfake, Brooklyn’s rock band Russian Baths conjures a ritualistic battle between soft and heavy, a glam stride of noises through calculated and distorted riffs; a classic combo that feels entirely new and neatly thoughtful. With Deepfake, Russian Baths has defaulted to settings that are quiet and loud simultaneously. Just imaging a crowd headbanging in slow motion, can you hear Russian Baths yet? Russian Baths is Jess Rees and Luke Koz, both on guitar and vocals. For their live shows they are joined by Kyle Garvey and Steven Levine on bass and drums, respectively.
Opener “Responder” dramatically builds up to a wall fuzzed arrangements that inadvertently transform into lulling guitars with Rees’s and Koz’s voices there, in whispers and full of drama. A journey taken together. “Parasite” resonates in the same settings, but with its own characteristics, engages and stands by itself showing for the first time the true colors of Deepfake: a textural and dark rock record. You can say that it’s almost a cathartic experience inspired and displayed cohesively between ascending, explosive moments and razor sharp guitars and synths. “Tracks” consistently dwells on this. Until we move to “Scrub It” which is probably one of the heaviest tracks of Deepfake. Leaving the haze behind, Russian Baths brings the drums to the front. They are pounding and revel against the hypnotic choruses. Not only that, but it dies, by the hand of horror-esque synths. A sudden death that’s necessary to allow “Ghost” into the equation — a less confrontational track, that exudes and shimmers shoegaze components. Unveiling and sculpting precision in the aesthetic and composition of Deepfake, soft and heavy.
Just as “Ghost” corresponds with the rest of the album, it deploys a brutal and furious drumming, an effective, incendiary rumble after seeing the light. “Ambulance” whales noisy synths and loud guitars, the drums recorded by Jedd Widner are filthy and atmospheric. Within Deepfake, the group reinvents themselves and opens up “Wrong” with movement and restructured euphoria thanks to the groove of Steven Levine’s drumming. It’s an emotional, but in your face, moment when “Tremble” and “Guts” both groan and moan their way into a more industrial and sinister territory. Dissolving into an abyss of intrusive aggression, that seems to be taken care of, “Guts” echoes itself out, nodding to a new found escape. Deepfake mostly maintains a tone of poise and theatrics without collision, with Rees’s and Koz’s voices crisscrossing and dancing in a graveyard, in a dream.
Deepfake is out now via Good Eye Records. You can listen and buy the record via Russian Baths’s Bandcamp.
