SYBERIA – Quan tot s’apagui
SYBERIA – Quan tot s’apagui
Moment of Collapse Records!
01/01/26
Review by Jon Deaux
7/10
“Quan tot s’apagui” arrives at 3 AM like the debt collector you knew was coming, you just thought you had more time. This is the fifth album from SYBERIA, and they’re not negotiating. There are no payment terms. No concern if you’re ready or not. It is an album if that helps you reference it. SYBERIA is referring to it as “a reckoning—the one you’ve been pretending wasn’t already underway when you scrolled through the collapse.” Either way, the Barcelona instrumental titans have shed the remnants of any semblance of mercy and produced something that is both brutally punishing and radiantly glorious. The flicker of light you see at the edges is simply your vision adjusting to the darkness.
SYBERIA has never had a problem with tension. While their previous albums were distant storms brewing and ready to unleash their wrath on an unsuspecting world, “Quan tot s’apagui” is a bomb counting down to detonation, a pure and simple await-the-final-bang urgency that borders on panic and desperation.
‘En la foscor una llum que brilla’ definitely starts off with a level of reserve that makes you anxious. Linares and JordiOnly only let isolated notes ring out in the air long enough for you to think they can’t possibly follow through with the aggression they possess in their sound, and by the time distortion makes its appearance, it doesn’t announce itself as much as it simply engulfs you. Linares and JordiOnly are getting frighteningly adept at creating a sense of inevitability around aggression.
They dawdle, dangling these “quiet” passages, but those moments of reprieve? They’re traps. ‘Llampecs d’oblit d’uns records en vida’ would be the epitome of the bait-and-switch, but this band has learned exactly when to hold back the dissonant fire that’s to come. This record isn’t for background music on your drive to work. This abyss doesn’t merely stare back—it has something to say, all of which is the farthest thing from comfort.
At the same time, it would be impossible to ignore the emotional violence of this album. This is how the fragile sense of vulnerability can morph into complete sonic brutality in SYBERIA because it never holds back in these instances. You will find yourself getting lost in tracks like ‘Dins la meva ànima la sang em bull’ (In my soul, my blood boils) as they flirt with the edge of tracing a melody, but they knock you in the face with total chaos. In the instance of the guitar play from Oscar Linares and JordiOnly, it’s more than skillfully done; it’s art in the shape of “tortured scream” and “help” in a cry that realizes people are never listening. Manel Woodcvtter’s drumming never loses its sense of urgency as they never strike the rhythm but rather are the opening charge in some emotional warfront with each crash of the cymbal representing the last breath in a dying world.
‘Quan tot s’apagui’ isn’t just an aggressive wall. It’s a slow burn, an ugly, beautiful trek to oblivion. The song is alive, yet dying right before your eyes. Each song adds to the last, until you’re lugging every single one with you. ‘Quan me n’vagi no em tanqueu els ulls’ translates to this perfectly: The end is inevitable. There’s no point in trying to outrun it.
SYBERIA will never provide that cleansing experience that you have been trained to yearn for and demand. Crescendos are cleansing for no purpose other than to show what pressure your chest cavity is capable of withstanding before shattering. The abyss they pull you towards has no significance; it simply *exists* as an end unto itself. It’s about the devastation and those moments when everything appears to be on the verge of falling apart and so will you. There’s no after effects.
SYBERIA will never make an attempt to provide those for you. Their emergency exits have been fused shut, the thermostat turned to smothering levels. This group understands their skill at crafting soundscapes so vast they could consume you whole. It’s so smooth: from the subtle string work of the guitars to total sonic devastation, this is almost like expert emotional exploitation. Torres’s work on the bass happening in those regions of sub-frequency where anxiousness incubates. It’s an experience more than an audio phenomenon, pressing heavy against your chest. Each and every sub-bass chord reminds that everything’s up for grabs.
Yes, there’s a certain air of pretension—four people from Catalunya dedicating forty minutes to documenting the void in their native language is hardly earth-shattering. But if you can make nothingness as thoughtfully constructed as this, then who cares if it’s pretentious? SYBERIA are calling their own shots, and if you’re not ready for the party. then it’s clearly up to you. They’re not holding your hand, pushing you over the edge, then making you peer over.
“Quan tot s’apagui” is definitely not an album for the faint of heart. If you’ve been waiting for the record that drops the facade of everything being okay, then this is the one you’ve been waiting for. SYBERIA is not a record that will offer you the answers but will provide you a reflection of the areas you’ve been hiding your face from. Trust me when I say this album will rip you apart, but not in the way you’re wishing it would in the way of a good catharsis but of the kind where you understand the tearing has been happening long ago.
But “Quan tot s’apagui” doesn’t care whether you love it. Either way, they’ll leave you bare to your nerve endings and let you sit there in the ruins of your own mind, hovering over the ‘play again’ button. SYBERIA has produced one such album which does not end with music. Instead, it simply moves its camp to the back of your head.
TRACKLISTING:
01. En la foscor una llum que brilla,
02. llampecs d’oblit d’uns records en vida,
03. naixença d’una mort tranquil·la.
04. Dins la meva ànima la sang em bull…
05. quan me’n vagi no em tanqueu els ulls.
LINKS:
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