It’s quite unfortunate that Troller gets tagged as “darkwave” because so many people immediately right off that genre as a whole, or anything -wavey, or even anything remotely derivative. It’s unfortunate because they’re so far from darkwave it’s almost (but not quite) not even worth mentioning. I’m not sure if you remember my review of their self-titled debut from a few years ago, it was quite hyperbolic (surprise!) but it was also 100% true, I fucking love that record so much, still, and can’t get enough of it. Graphic is just as good, if not better, it’s a little less “graveyard hallucination pop” and a little more dreamy goth pop (there’s a difference, I swear), the vocals just as dramatic but a little less angelic, the melodies a little more overt, the ambient interludes a little more developed, and the gloom a little more gloomy, it’s so dark and so heavenly, I just want to fucking die every time I listen to it, thanks mostly to Amber Star-Goers’ majestically heart-melting vocals, but also that hellishly deep bass thrum, it fucking. kills. me.
All in all, it’s currently sitting in the #2 spot of my favorite non-drone, non-metal records of the year. And I want to give you a vinyl copy for free. If you need more convincing at how utterly fucking amazing Troller is, go stream Graphic, then come back and enter this contest.
All you have to do is write a haiku about trolls, goths, graveyards, BDSM, anti-darkwave, angels, etc, and send it to graphichaiku [at] antigravitybunny [dot] com before the end of Sunday, August 28th.