Stroking Breeze – As Illusions Start To Fade CD

As Illusions Start To Fade is a second full-length record by Stroking Breeze, compelling German punk rock trio deeply rooted in foundations of alternative and metal sound. These are familiar faces to our blog since we previously covered their debut album named Appearance Is Deceiving on our pages. A brand new record delivers more innovations to their music, but the base of the sound retains nearly the same, with loads of interesting ideas and moments involved throughout the album. One thing is for sure, As Illusions Start To Fade includes loads of entertainment, excellent musicianship, and relentless energy.

The main focus is still on excellent female lead vocals that are ranging from clean chants, polished epic or heavy metal technics, metalcore screams, and thrash metal shout outs. Still, Martha’s voice is punk rock enough because it contains a lot of stamina and confidence throughout the entire album. Ferocious male vocalist pairs to her vocal maneuvers with classic punk rock shouts that are transitioning into black metal vocalizations depending on the direction Stroking Breeze is heading to at the moment. Their vocal dualities are liberating enough power to accommodate the profoundly dynamic musicianship of the group.

The rhythm section sounds exceptional on this recording. The drummer provides a marvelous performance that spans over various technics and genres, but mainly bases his musicianship on instrumentations characteristic for metal music. He completely controls the direction of the entire band and knows when to switch to a more moderate tempo. Slightly distorted basslines are supporting these rhythmical maneuvers with appropriate orchestrations. The bass guitar liberates gracious servings of active low-end tones and fulfills the ambiance with expansive sound.

Both instruments are liberating enough technicalities, but also leaving enough room for the guitar to burst with relentless chord progressions and other shreds. Besides arpeggiated segments characteristic for alternative rock, energetic punk rock chord harmonics, and magnificent metal parts, guitars are covering the rhythm section with melodic orchestrations. The guitar sound is dynamic, massive, distorted, but polished to fit both the aesthetics and atmosphere that As Illusions Start To Fade carries along the way. The complete trio goes with the flow and understands how the dynamics in the music works. Therefore, As Illusions Start To Fade carries energetic punk rock sound, saturated with the calmness of alternative rock and precision of metal music.

As Illusions Start To Fade comes housed in six-panel digipak. The cover artwork includes a marvelous illustration of a raven on the front. The group dedicates the remaining space on the cover to the lyrics and the necessary info about the release. Like their previous album, Stroking Breeze decided to publish their record in the true spirit of DIY ethics, but the complete release looks and sounds astounding. Check out their Bandcamp page for more info about ordering.