PRESS

"A new project that needs to be checked out!" - Side-Line Magazine (BEL)

"The newest project to come from the prolific Alexander Leonard Donat is ASSASSUN, the debut EP of which is completely novel terrain, even for him. Discordant, less sung than flung into existence and stuck hanging on the aether as a crooked ornament, ‘The World I Will Leave’ hits differently than anything else.
Donat hammers a harsh sound here, and as he shouts his universe alive, it is not so much distilled rage as it feels like bitterness; a cold, wintry disdain that has crystalized into an upturned collar, a spurned world. Indeed, the tracks focus on irrational, long-suffered emotions such as spite and disconnect, and each is underscored with an arrhythmic severity as punishing as the feelings themselves. The distortion accompanying each melodic theme echoes the plodding resistance of human nature as it scrambles to make sense of such spiritual states – there is a confusion and deep hurt buried deep beneath the seething, tucked in the folds of every song’s cracked heart.
What is fascinating about Donat’s projects is that they are always unexpected journeys through the darker fragments of the human mind; he is adept at questing through the most difficult of unconscious states without feeling the need to point out that he’s doing it. Each different genre he tackles comes through his lens with invigorated clarity, particularly when – as here – he is destroying them only to build them back up in whirlwind dichotomies and blending them with mercilessly surgical precision. It is difficult to say what genres are even represented with the ASSASSUN project – perhaps a new genre should emerge for Donat alone, for there is surely nothing else out there that sounds like anything he does. ASSASSUN’s ‘The World I Will Leave’ is challenging, but in the sense that it is rewarding to grapple with its leitmotifs and find connection with its disharmony. Much like scaling a treacherous mountain pass to behold the splendor of its surrounding vistas from its summit, it is an expedition well worth the sweat and toil one puts into it. Like much of Donat’s other work, it is not background music. It must be clasped steadfastly to the self, and fought with until it submits to being not only understood, but beloved." - Firefly Mouth (USA)

"This time he's somewhere between Gameboy sounds, 80s darkwave and experimental pop music. However, one element remains the same: the distorted voice is perhaps something of a leitmotif. Four tracks can be heard on the EP The World I Will Leave. In particular, The Art of Ignorance sticks with its pressure, tempo and danceable darkness. Super amazing thing! A musical journey back to the future, so to speak!" - Luserlounge (GER)

"A brute version of Data Bank A" - Prémonition (FRA)

""The World I Will" Leave is bathed in a different kind of sonic world which Donat completely makes his own. In a hammering hard sound, he coldly releases his bitterness about the world. Industrial instrumental sounds make our hearts cold in "Winter Is". But don't expect the classically stoic mechanistic sounds that we usually know. Donat manages to create a very melodic industrial sound in this song, under his no nonsense sounding vocals, which he drops relentlessly. The song quiets down in a right-angled unruly, after which the hectic pace once again takes over. The title track echoes a resigned disappointment, in a gray, fairly minimalist sound box filled with mysteriously cutting synths. Swirling under strongly sustained beats, the menacing "The Art Of Ignorance" hits you heart-pounding. Arrhythmic breakpoints amplify the power of the prevailing turmoil. The keystrokes in "Act Out Of Space" sound like an alarm or alien signal, after which the rhythms pound against them at a jungle speed. A cold and hard dance track. [Donat] is a man who means a lot in already existing genres, but with this powerful project he still crosses boundaries." - Luminous Dash (BEL)

"A musical centipede [...] Donat presents a mix of EBM, industrial, noise and darkwave. It sounds like Anne Clark, Nitzer Ebb, Calva Y Nada and :Wumpscut: are dancing together. A really nice and different side of the versatile Donat." - De Subjectivisten (NL)

"A good business card for the umpteenth incarnation of the musical inspiration and compositional talent of Alexander, a real workaholic of the underground who always manages to positively surprise us. [...] The short EP opens with the retro-electro rhythm of a "Winter Is" with post-punk fragrances, whereas the title-track bends towards synthwave tensions with peaks of angularity, showing itself decisive at the height of the solid refrain. The other two tracks, "The Art Of Ignorance" and "Act Out Of Spite", push towards an even more muscular writing: tight, physical and overwhelming the first, dry and intense the second, but both with a foot and a half in primal EBM." - Darkroom Magazine (ITA)

"Eerie off-kilter, compulsive vibes resound with foreboding intensity through stalking, pulsing chunky bass ripples, harsh, hallucinating synth strains, arrhythmic, jittery beats, and warped tight tinkly keys into restrained floods of tense anxieties around the powerfully frustrated airless shouts and howls of relentless caustic vocalizations, fighting, in vain, with a world that is not as it appears to be, whilst longing in boundless sadness to leave it all behind." - White Light / White Heat (ITA)

"Amazing!" - Loud Cities Radio Show (GRE)