Oddball French heavy rock outfit Los Disidentes Del Sucio Motel (LDDSM) is difficult to assign to a specific genre or style. Over their career they’ve been described as stoner, psychedelic and prog rock, and none of those are wrong. Nor do they give you the complete picture. Now they’re back after 4 years in limbo with fourth album Polaris, and they’re every bit as tough to pigeonhole as always. If I were to make a Hail Mary effort to describe their style, it would be alt-rock mixed with prog, post-rock, and post-metal, with grunge/stoner/desert elements lurking at the edges.1 You’re as apt to hear elements of Avenged Sevenfold as you are 30 Seconds to Mars, Soundgarden, Kyuss or Baroness as the album ambles along, and as quirky and scattershot as that may sound on paper, the band is enormously skilled and not only do they make it work, but craft highly accessible, hook-loaded rockers in the process. Normally this kind of thing would be out of my wheelhouse, but fate and happenstance found me sampling the promo for Polaris. Now I’ve come here, not to bury it, but to praise it.
Everyone likes a good, skin-snagging rock album with big dragon energy and fat, sticky anthems. Polaris delivers these things, though they’re dolled up in unusual attire. Take proper lead track “Blood-Planet Child” for instance. It’s a righteous rocker referencing everything from alt-metal to alt-rock and grunge, and at no point does it do anything but slap your ears with heroic guitar-work and impassioned vocals. Hooks pile up on hooks like an audible Suez Canal jam, and you’ll enjoy the ride entirely. Other cuts like the excellent “Dark Matter” and the burly “The Plague” offer the same kind of exuberant guitar-rock, and by the time you reach them you’ll already have stopped caring what genus the good times should be assigned to. Hell, the latter cut even reminds me of the long defunct Only Living Witness, which is a pretty out of left field surprise.
“Alphs Ursae Minoris” is like early Soundgarden infused with Melvins plasma and force-fed a steady diet of Helmet. Moody cut “The Key” is like Hoobastank doing a risky but successful collaboration with Tool, and the hits just keep on coming. Downsides? “Earthrise” is a bit too droning and atmospheric for much of its runtime, which bogs down the album’s momentum a bit. It does eventually shift to some Metallica-esque power riffing on the back half however. Aside from the slow burning but still palatable “Earthrise,” every song is a winner, and at just over 45 minutes, Polaris flies by in a flash, leaving you eager to hit that replay button.
As a guitar-driven opus, the work of Nicolas Foucaud and Romain Reichhart is put front and center, and they knock it out of the park with a crazy hodge-podge of stoner, hard rock, metal and prog leads and harmonies. Their playing is bright and vibrant, injecting a breathless energy into the material and allowing a lot of emotion to bleed through. Vocals are shared, with keyboardist Daniel Scherding carrying a lot of the water. He often sounds like Terje Harøy of Pyramaze, and his vocals walk the line between alt-rock, screamo and a kind of gruff Hetfield-esque roar. I Like much of what the band does vocally, though I’m hardly a fan of alt-rock and absolutely detest screamo. Fortunately, screaming is kept to a minimum and the singing carries genuine passion and bucket-loads of emotion. I suppose the vocals may be a deal-breaker for some as they skew “Non-metal” more often than not, but they fit the music well and deliver big feelz in the process. What’s most impressive is how the band manages to span numerous genres within the same song without things sounding disjointed or chaotic. It’s all as smooth a silk, and that’s quite an accomplishment.
Polaris is one of the better rock fusion albums you’re likely to hear this year and timed perfectly for Spring. I have a hunch I’ll be playing it a lot this summer and this unexpected treat already has me swimming in the LDDSM back-catalog and liking what I’m hearing. I’m sorry I’m so late to the LDDSM party. You might be too. Check this out.2
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 192 kbps mp3
Label: Klonosphere Records
Websites: lddsm.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/LDDSM
Releases Worldwide: April 2nd, 2021
