Sacrifice & Isolation

Collapse Under the Empire are a post-rock duo from Hamburg, Germany; Chris Burda and Martin Grimm have steadily crafted an electronic and cinematic style. Sacrifice & Isolation, their fifth album, completes the work started on 2011’s Shoulders & Giants. They consider the two albums to form a concept of sorts that’s difficult to explain, since their work is instrumental, imagistic, and clearly nonlinear and non-narrative. The music, however, evolves slowly from electronic beats to live drums, massive synth banks, and humanist guitar tones. Not unlike the renaissance seen in Scandinavian action films, Collapse Under the Empire bring with them a sense of clear, clean modernity where technology is driving people’s lives, as opposed to people driving the technology. This sense of being overwhelmed can be heard in the gothic cathedral-like swelling of sound heard on the two title tracks and “Massif,” before “Lost” brings about a sense of human touch. Mostly, their music is a Rorschach test; what one draws from the work is largely dependent on one’s own influences, emotions, and circumstances.