SIERRA took her time before releasing her debut album. Six years passed between the Strange Valley EP and A Story of Anger, a period which enabled the artist to release other short formats, tour with Carpenter Brut, play at the Roadburn Festival, collaborate with HEALTH and have his music featured in both the video game Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodhunt and an Yves Saint-Laurent advert. His music, somewhere between EBSM and darksynth, already has its share of fans, attracted by this dark yet seductive universe with cinematic and cyberpunk influences.
What's immediately obvious with A Story of Anger is that Annelise Morel didn't just release an album for the sake of it, as if it were an automatic routine. She could simply have compiled her previous tracks or repeated what she does so well, and that would have been enough to keep us happy, we'd have retained two or three hits to feed our playlists and that's it. Instead of resting on her laurels, the musician seems to have set herself a number of challenges for this album, all of which she meets with talent, starting with the 80's and film influences which are very much present but don't turn into a pretextual fetishism that hides any lack of fresh ideas... No, their treatment is at once creative, modern and personal. A Story of Anger presents itself to us as a cry of anger, and it's hard to imagine a cry remaining silent... obviously so does she: the voice takes on a new importance in SIERRA's music. If, in the past, certain tracks have contained a few words, and Never Right remains in that cold, spoken-word tone, full of restrained menace, the surprise is stronger with Stronger. Haunted piano, a nostalgic melancholy tone and pop refrains: SIERRA successfully ventures into new horizons, both musically and emotionally.
This is a constant with A Story of Anger. Of course, the specifications are met, and fans won't be disappointed. Big, thumping bass? Futuristic nocturnal ambiences that smell of rain splattering on asphalt and neon lights? This first album is indeed generous with them. Featurings with Corvad and Carpenter Brut kick ass, By Fire, Club 21, the epic In My Veins and the frenetic Your Shadow are overflowing with a tension that will have you sweating profusely... But we also plunge a little deeper into the musician's soul on more contemplative, ethereal tracks (Traum, So Blind...), which manage to combine formidable effectiveness with a more introspective mood. The new collaboration with HEALTH is a fine illustration of this: rather than going for the jugular and remaking a Hateful-style track, Holding on to Nothing makes the most of Jake Duzsik's shoegaze inflections, coupling them with hypnotic beats for a result that is less instantly devastating, but ultimately just as powerful as their previous joint effort.
A Story of Anger is a success on every level: SIERRA offers what we've come to expect, but much more. Rather than timidly opening new doors, it pushes them open with courage and ambition, throwing the quota of angry bass and cyberpunk ambiences in our faces, but also an unexpected dose of emotion. Without respite or weakness, A Story of Anger has the luxury of revealing its riches over the course of several listens, when we were expecting immediate pleasure. There's nothing to throw away from this collection of new tracks, each one a monster of efficiency and power, each in its own way. SIERRA will have kept us waiting for a while, but it was worth it: this first album has certainly been a long time coming, but this time was necessary to guarantee its longevity.
