Marches doomed to repeat themselves, sermons drowned in static, signals flickering in the dark—these are the fault lines traced in Perimeters’ latest work, Set the Tripwire. The EP offers no escape, only exposure: cracks beneath ritual, cycles of power, and meaning eroded by indifference. Each track functions like a device left hidden in the ruins—taut, primed, waiting for complacency to stumble across the wire.
Perimeters are a three-piece post-punk/darkwave band from Portland, Oregon: Colette on vocals, Chris on synths, and Lan on bass. Their sound sits in the tension between early post-punk minimalism and the spectral atmospheres of darkwave, drawing comparisons to Lebanon Hanover, The Mall, Interpol, and New Order. With stripped-down arrangements and stark vocal delivery, they craft songs that cut through with atmosphere and bite.
The EP’s title track launches with a crunchy drum machine rattling like a detonator countdown. Chris’s synths shimmer with halcyon sighs, while Lan’s bass drives with unembellished classic post-punk melody. Colette’s vocal delivery is taut and minimal, declaiming poetry that feels closer to an urgent communiqué than conventional lyrics. The refrain, “blame indifference / there’s no forgiveness”, resounds like an indictment of collective inertia. Sonically, it feels like a forgotten 1980s cassette dug out of a dusty Walkman—urgent, portable, and personal.
Opening with a pulsing synth bass and an unmistakably Batcave-like bass guitar line, Laced Doctrines fuses old-school goth austerity with the clipped bite of positive punk. Colette’s words land like sharp-edged fragments—“pressure syndicate / slush fund prophets”—skewering institutions and their hollow rituals. The song’s backbone recalls the wiry tension of Malaria! or Cinema Strange, with a hypnotic relentlessness that reinforces its theme of systems conditioning obedience.
At nearly twice the length of the other songs, “Negative Space” becomes the EP’s gravitational core. A throbbing bassline guides the track into subterranean depths, recalling Modern English’s “16 Days / Gathering Dust” as filtered through This Mortal Coil’s sepulchral fog. Vocals blur through distortion, transmitting like a phantom broadcast from a collapsed world: “patterns, cycles, break, broken” looping like coded signals in the dark. The song evolves into a meditation on digital cults, performative lives, and the hollowness of constructed worlds, evoking a gothic dread that feels vast and immersive.
Closing the EP, “Shadow Fleet” strips back to its barest essentials: an unadorned drumbeat, thick bass throbs, and vocals steeped in fatalism. The Joy Division-like bassline anchors Colette’s scathing commentary on monoculture, exploitation, and the sanctioned erosion of love and loyalty. Lines like “doom scrolls / atrocities / holy flesh / photography” collapse the personal and political into a fevered stream of images. The track lingers like an afterimage—final, unyielding, and damning.
Listen to the EP below and order here:
Set the Tripwire is the band’s second EP, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Deaf Dance, with cover art by Flesh Photography. Available exclusively on Bandcamp and YouTube, the EP will be launched with a release show at The Sïx Below Midnight in Portland on Saturday, October 4th, featuring local peers Strzyga and Nightsister.
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