Siichaq showcase their influences – namely shoegaze, post-punk, and throbbing electronica – on their newest full-length collection of engrossing, grungy tunes.
Release date: August 28, 2026 | Independent | Bandcamp | Instagram
The shoegaze renaissance of the last decade or so has been fascinating to behold. Some groups – Nothing, Whirr, DIIV – have reached wide recognition by sticking closely to the blueprint set by the godfathers of the genre (My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, etc), while others – Spotlights, Cloakroom, Grivo – emphasized the direction taken by projects like Jesu by doubling down on the heaviness to create a middle ground between dense suffocation and levitating beauty. Others still – Julie, Wisp – take it further in the indie direction, pulling younger fans into the genre without alienating the older folks. Atlanta, Georgia’s Siichaq sits proudly among these revivalists with a distinct sound all their own, taking liberally from shoegaze’s established traits (fuzzy walls of sound, hushed vocals, slacker-y lyricism) along with a litany of other influences on their new album, The Righteous Sword.
It’s hard not to get lost in the squall that Siichaq conjure up on this album. Each song has characteristics that make it stand out in the tracklist: the ambient electronics and background coos eerily underpinning the campfire aesthetic of acoustic ballad “The Fear”; the flanged electronic percussion and infectious singalong chorus of “Idle” recalling the dancey post-punk of classic New Order; the honest-to-God 808 kick drums giving “Cattle Driver” a pulsating drive while the guitars remain as bleak as possible and vocalist Kennie Mason adopts a rapped delivery in the verses. The carnival-esque keyboards punctuating the coming-of-age realizations in “Tight Rope” are particularly effective when paired with the weary lyrics:
‘I’m not a fan of the circus,
Everything’s too loud.
The animals make me sad,
And the freaks on the wires are stressing me out.‘
“MTSWCB” is maybe the most straightforward shoegaze song here, although even this one has scratchy industrial effects and Health-like guitar echoes throughout that elevate it a cut above your garden-variety gazers. The band also engages in some cutting sociopolitical commentary on the sublime “Nothing if Not”, with matter-of-fact musings like ‘Why am I concerned with you when our democracy is coming unglued/Maybe it’s a coping thing‘ and ‘I guess Earth keeps on turning even when it’s burning down‘. Mason’s delivery is low, close to the mic, and intimate, making lines like ‘Even if everything’s fucked, I got pretty lucky with you‘ all the more relatable and, by proxy, emotionally devastating. This track easily became a contender for my Song of the Year for its unflinching comparisons between the state of the world and the state of an individual’s world – the reckoning of the two ideals, how guilty it feels to enjoy one’s life while everyone else suffers – and the pairing of it with the best musical progression on an album filled with great musical progressions.
Siichaq found something special on The Righteous Sword. It’s something very human and authentic; if I were to put a fine point on it, I would call it ‘touching’. Many bands in shoegaze or its adjacent styles treat lyrics like an afterthought, burying them underneath walls of reverb so that only the faintest whisper of a vocal line floats airily on top. In Siichaq‘s case, the vocals are mixed forward often, making sentiments like ‘Polar icecaps are melting and I’m worried about when you’re leaving here/If I had to pick between having you and saving everything I’d choose you/I’m such an asshole‘ unignorable, and I wouldn’t want it other way. The Righteous Sword is a minor masterpiece, wasting no time (a trim 29 minutes across nine songs) to deliver some of the most holistic, poignant music I’ve heard all year. Siichaq, if you’re reading this, get the rest of the album onto Bandcamp pronto so I can buy it verily and with haste.
