Occurrence’s latest album, “Slow Violence”, is a compelling double album with 22 tracks that demonstrate the band’s musical progression. The inspiration for the album stems from Rob Nixon’s concept of “slow violence,” which refers to the unnoticed violence that the Western world imposes on developing countries, violence that takes years or decades to register. The band takes this as a fitting metaphor for the impact of their collective pasts on their personal lives. The album is a reflection of their journey through time, exploring the weight of their experiences and the toll it takes on their present. The tracks on the album vary in mood and style, with each song telling its own unique story. “SLOW VIOLENCE” is an exceptional body of work that showcases Occurrence’s artistic evolution and ability to create music that is both thought-provoking and engaging.
Opening with the jagged and jangling under-produced yet wavering guitar alongside pulsating electronic beats on “Blossom Forth”, you’re immediately hurled into a world that’s defiantly its own, strikingly differentiated, and wildly imaginative all around. Occurrence do not pull punches one bit, taking complete authority and command of their arrangements into this seismic, otherworldly, and wholly immersive universe of sonic extravagance that’s wildly weird yet keenly intriguing.
Songs like “The Future, Pt 1” showcase another style, a ballad within this imagination that’s strangely building, a cathartic flow that feels like an anxiety antidote. The way the beat breaks down is downright futuristic and otherworldly in many which ways. The pumping and unsettling fury and robotic utterances on “I Fucked The World To Get You To Love Me” is incredibly unnerving but strangely intoxicating as well.
From back to front, Slow Violence is a tour de force of experimental thoughts and ideas into an amalgamation that’s immersive and intoxicating throughout.