That’s How I Fight are a four-piece rock band from Poland who formed in 2020. Movement Two (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 290-2) is their second album. With a band name like that, I suppose a bit of me was hoping for an aggressive two-fisted punk-hardcore band to wallop me with songs of vehement protest, possibly barbed with a political bent. Instead, they’re droners – the team use guitars, bass, drums and synths (plus samples) to turn in their own form of strange and unsettling dark ambient music, and may have found their ideal home on this label.
Actually it’s kinda refreshing to see a collaborative attempt to make music roughly within this genre, since “dark ambient” is often associated with a solo act – one disaffected fellow with his keyboards and computers, hopefully locked underground in a cellar as he broods and rails against the world. Rather than assault us with noise, That’s How I Fight work away at their craft with the patience of a Satanic tailor, and thereby manage to avoid a lot of pitfalls and clichés; though they won’t serve up conventional rock fare to the hungry beat-merchant monsters, their sustained meditations in the land of sharp-edged drone do manage a delicious astringency and even take us to a somewhat harrowing place, where the pains are unknown and plentiful and the outcomes are uncertain. They need at least ten minutes at a time to perform this magick formula, but it usually pays off; Sunn O)) aren’t about to be toppled from their throne, but exciting spookster moments of hauntery do abound here. (25/04/2023)