From the artist whose modern production journey brought us the fiercely impressive album Falling to You, the elusive Sybilanta returns this season, with a second full-length project that’s equally evocative, distinct, and in keeping with the fearless style set by the debut.
Featuring eight original songs, Uncanny Valley bursts into view with the electronic pop-punk energy and strong riffs of Heartbeat. Both the lyrics and production work in unison as ever, utilising contrast to hit with fierce impact from the outset, and engaging with emotional interjections that effectively blend the personal and the broadly accessible throughout.
It’s a huge opening anthem, alternative and dark, impassioned and powerful, with that same poetic mystique found throughout the lyrics of Falling to You – only perhaps with something a little more dark or unsure to toy with.
Terminate follows, an atmospheric hit of heavy metal, with smooth vocals again reflecting on intimate, personal feelings and experiences. The language is fierce, culturally familiar but conceptually vague, and the track hits like a classic new-metal jam from a simpler time.
After this, the echoing riff-work and ambient embrace of Future feels perfectly placed, a vocal downpour and rising anticipation again employing juxtaposition between moments for huge impact as things build. This track is a personal favourite, akin to the opening song of Falling to You, for its gritty personality, spaciousness, and changing emotions.
Contrast further tightens its grip to follow, as the folk meandering tone and quietness of Uncanny Valley captivates unexpectedly. This is the essence of the Sybilanta sound, versatility being both fearless and relevant to the story and style. The hook here is piercing, bold and strained at its peak, and the song, despite its natural vagueness, provokes thought well, as the music, with spiralling strings and heavy rhythmic hits, proceeds to envelop you.
The project seems to grow more self-aware is it rolls along, and that quality is intriguing, to say the least. Is this Alive? takes that further still, a warped electronic arena of fragmented sounds and ideas, confronting yet again strangely in keeping with the Sybilanta process of attempting to come to life or become something newly born and steadily breathing.
Digital Star feels like a rightful next step, blending the warped effects and dissolving protagonist voice with a more satisfying new-metal / pop-punk arrangement and melody. Then to flip things over once more, the acoustic intimacy and raw emotional contemplation of Choir of One is enthralling, and perhaps the album’s most simple but unmistakable track.
To finish, Sybilanta takes us through a complex journey of coded wonder and changing energy, as Syntax appears to encapsulate the ideas and intentions of Uncanny Valley, in a rhythmically addictive, again, impressively distinct fashion.
We’re well and truly engulfed in this new musical era now, and as far as storytelling, cinematic design and escapism go, Sybilanta’s leadership is undeniable. The muic is powerful, unpredictable, intriguing, and touches on the very topic it confronts in a clever and compelling way.
I’ll let you hit press to make up your own mind, but without a doubt – it will be interesting to hear where the music takes things in the coming years.
Find Sybilanta on Instagram, X, Soundcloud & their Website.
