Awake and Alert

Talk to Me so I Can Fall Asleep is the debut album from Crater. Band members Ceci Gomes and Kessiah Gordon have been touring alongside other bands and shooting out singles since 2013 leading up to this industrial pop album.

“Crater Head” starts everything off with its static drum opening and strong bass line. The static starts to ease up and the lyrics come more into focus. It is gritty but has an easy groove to it. That grit continues through to “Sick Sad World” but backs off in “Ain’t Right” which kicks off with a misleading brightness to its heartbreaking lyrics. Further in, “Hardly At All” lays it on thick with its overt message about the dying relationship. The album does take a small dip in quality when “Badlands” starts. Even with the static industrial sound that Crater has, their songs are still smooth. “Badlands,” though, is incredibly choppy for the first half and then enters a repetitive loop for the second half. Talk to Me so I Can Fall Asleep does end on a high note with “Brew,” which ends with a resolution, not just for this particular song, but for the entire album.

Crater successfully pushes on the industrial with their cold, metallic like sound and lyrics, with most of their lyrics focusing on this slowly dying relationship that has all these many facets to it.  The slower tempo taken in many of these songs also lends to the aspects of the failing relationship, along with the album title.“Talk to Me so I Can Fall Asleep” tells that the decay is in process but there’s something lingering left between these two. The songs show how hard it is to get through the day with that person but at the end of the day, they still find solace within each other, whether that is for the best or not. When Talk to Me so I Can Fall Asleep is not falling into that slower pattern, the album holds a strong groove that seems to be always going, but no matter the song there is a slight darkness happening in it. Overall, though, this debut album is a great start and hopefully, Crater is working on their next project soon.