The needle of pop culture now rests in a groove where we have to think back to a time when music wasn’t so thoroughly haunted by the pressures of hype. This is the reason why rock, which is dead-er than it ever has been, is still not dead, today. Whether as a fount and canvas for reactionary-minded reactionisim or as a louder, more immediate means to articulate the heart’s more urgent tremors, the mode of larger-than-life sounds unspooling from guitars survives and endures in this digital age as more a spirit than a means to an end. Local quartet The Cultures are an embodiment of this diehard-ism. And their debut single “Are We Dead?” calls forth that spirit to blow out the windows in the room.

For all its berserk grandiosity, “Are We Dead?”‘s essence is pure and simple: It’s a love song. “Cuz you’re beautiful / Beautiful to me” – this is the song’s central concern and reason for existing. The annals of music history are lined with monuments erected for the same reason that inspires this song’s genesis. Any band trafficking in this tradition will be measured by 1) How it enriches it and, 2) What of its own making it uses to do that. In both respects, The Cultures come out unequivocally on top.

What works in the favour of the collective whole is that each of its moving parts is a dynamo. Fronted by bassist Ashwin Rao – who also brings the howls and fuzz in garage rock rippers Knightingale – The Cultures also benefits from the six-string prowess of and chemistry between guitarists Keith VVolf and Aqilah Misuary and kit-pounder Kyle Butcher. In their individual capacities, each member goes the distance with their instrument. In the totality of the song, where the fast-strummed riffs, sky-lighting harmonics, groove-proffering pulse, seismic thuds and openhearted confessionals come together, they are legion.

But never is the simultaneously freeing but isolating feeling of falling in love lost in the song’s gravitational force. In Ashwin’s blood-rush pronouncements and through the song’s sticky groove and in the seams of its titanic guitars, that discrepancy and its intoxicating effects are felt. Wistfulness, misty-eyed jubilation, earnestnesses and the logic-defying urge to love no matter what the object of said affection feels – these are the stakes here. And as the song builds to it dam-breaking climax, those stakes get higher and higher.

‘The ’90s’ is the common timestamp for music like this. But even if the form enjoyed the most resonance then, it can be pushed further, today. The Cultures are doing that – it’s a band that exists because this is a battle worth bleeding for.

So, likeminded or not, hit play on the band’s first salvo and hear its testimony for yourself.