Album Review: Anwar Sadat — Ersatz Living

Merciless and severe, Ersatz Living is the latest document of a band unflinching in the face of change. Anwar Sadat has refined their punk fury, with songs that are informed equally by German industrial and no-wave noise. Gone is the hook-laden angular indie of their earliest work, replaced by a mechanical precision that serves as the soundtrack to a manic episode. If you feel moved to take up a career as a demolition specialist, then you’re successfully tuned in to what the band is doing. There are sublime moments throughout, as the band certainly has no aversion to more melancholic moments. As such, these function as a break to the overtly aggressive, Swans-like compositions, evidence that there are certainly instances of transcendent aural joy in a stark field of terror.