Yellow Bulb. - CABAL cassette

Yellow Bulb. - CABAL cassette

Over the course of their recorded output, Yellow Bulb. has forged a strange alchemy. Travis Kuhlman’s thunderous drums often anchor D Haddon’s chaotic and minimalist approach to guitar and bass, with the duo’s frequent guest stars punctuating an eclectic and experimental approach. Shades of noise rock, industrial music, post-punk and doom metal can be found in Kuhlman (DUG) and Haddon’s (High Marks) other projects, but Yellow Bulb. has become a wild combination that fuses these things at sonic extremity.

As Yellow Bulb. return with their third album CABAL, the duo has expanded the concept into the realm of a hypermodern 4 piece, members digitally assembled but physically scattered across 4 states and all with bands of their own. Jake Cregger (TRIAC, Multicult) contributes his epic drums and squalling noise throughout the album; Stranded’s David Mansfield brings some of his most abstract and singular guitar playing to the band. CABAL is a chaotic and experimental rock album, driven by the power of two drummers, punctuated by melting electronics and buzzing synthesizers. Mastered by the deft hand of Will Killingsworth at Dead Air, these darkly sinister tracks showcase a freewheeling collective that isn’t always bound to genre or expectation. Throughout the songs showcase the group’s widescreen vision for experimental rock music, from the sludged out stomp of “Magdalena Always Pushing Uphill” to the deconstructed post-punk schizophrenia of “Logic On Fumes.” Each side of the album ends with a further augmented lineup, swirling in the talents of the Minneapolis psych duo Sisters of Planetaria. CABAL sees Yellow Bulb. expand to further murky and atmospheric territory. The album’s centerpiece “Ottoman Empress” remains somehow singular in its rhythmic groove while remaining unrelentingly heavy, a post-metal intensity infused with gothic melancholy. The album ends with the three part suite “Sirensbreath,” an epic that combines the talents of everyone involved while loosely recounting the Hans Christen Anderson version of The Little Mermaid and maintaining the original’s significantly more tragic ending. CABAL is a conspiracy of artistic sound, a populated and grandiose vision of rock music that looks to the future unapologetically in a way that only creative musicians can and another chapter in the uncommon saga of Yellow Bulb.