After eight long years of silence, Los Angeles noise architects Siren Section are back with their new album “Separation Team”. This is the sound of a duo, James Cumberland and John Dowling, who have spent decades sharpening their tools, finally dropping a monolithic, 19-track concept album that balances on the knife-edge between beauty and decay. This is rock music deconstructed and rebuilt with glitching circuits and aching heart.
These guys go way back, cutting their teeth in the experimental project JINSAI before morphing into their current form. That history of fearless experimentation is all over “Separation Team.” This is a proper album, meant to be played loud and in one sitting. It’s a dense, hazy journey into what they’ve dubbed “glitchgaze”—a perfect name for where shoegaze’s wall of sound crashes into the digital abyss.
The engine room is the duo themselves. Cumberland and Dowling are the masterminds, playing all the instruments—distorted guitars, synths that feel like cold electricity, and rhythmic loops that get under your skin. They’re not alone in the trenches, though. Drummer Bryan Steinmetz brings a live, human thump to critical tracks like “Bullet Train” and “Minotaur,” his acoustic kit cutting through the electronic fog. The production, helmed by Cumberland with Nels Jensen, is a character in itself—sometimes clinical, sometimes suffocatingly warm. It’s all mixed by Mike Schuppan and mastered by Tom Baker, giving this beast a polished sheen that somehow makes its raw nerves feel even more exposed.
So what’s this album about? Strap in. The title “Separation Team” is paradoxical, and the band loves it. It’s about building a fortress for two against the world, a retreat that becomes a trap. It’s love as Armageddon. This ain’t happy music. It’s music about cycles, compulsion, and the slow erosion of the self. They talk about the “ouroboros”—the snake eating its own tail—and that theme of self-consuming patterns runs through the whole damn thing. This is heaviness as atmosphere, not just volume. A track like “Deer Hunter” is cited as one of their heaviest not because it’s the loudest, but because of its haunting, deep exposure. That’s a power move.
The music mirrors this perfectly. Opener “Construct” feels like a summoning, a ritual built on repetition. But this repetition isn’t lazy; it’s hypnotic. It lets ideas mutate and fester. Tracks evolve slowly, pulling you deeper into the maze. When they do unleash chaos, like on the pissed-off and twitchy “Equilibrium,” it feels earned. They play with dynamics masterfully—songs like “Medicine” and “Carry Through” have those epic loud-quiet-loud shoegaze drops that hit your gut.
And the vocals? Don’t expect a clear-cut frontman. Cumberland and Dowling use their voices as another texture—another instrument. Sometimes it’s a clean, wounded whisper buried in the mix. Other times, it’s shredded by vocoders and distortion, becoming a defensive, mechanical ghost. It creates this incredible distance, making you question who’s speaking and why. When Dowling takes the lead, it feels like a momentary chapter break, a brief moment of reflection in the storm.
Standout moments are everywhere. The previously released singles “Glass Cannon” and “Medicine” are your gateways, showing the band’s balance of ghostly melody and gritty noise. But the deeper cuts are where the album truly lives. The one-two punch of “Tritagonist [1]” and “[2]” promises a sprawling narrative. “They Will Never Find Us” sounds like a paranoid mantra set to a malfunctioning drum machine. This is a record that demands your attention and rewards it with new details on every listen.
“Separation Team” is a triumphant, challenging, and utterly compelling return. It’s not an easy listen; it’s a necessary one. It’s the sound of two veterans ignoring trends and drilling straight into the ugly/beautiful core of modern connection and isolation. This album doesn’t just want you to hear it—it wants to consume you. Let it. Siren Section just dropped a modern rock masterpiece.