With an 18-year discography spanning a dozen albums, the band aim to push comfort zone and genre boundaries, aiming to give their audience a deep and fascinating listening experience. With several new additions to the band’s lineup as well, the sound of the new album promises to be fresh even for longstanding fans of the band.
The album kicks off with an eerie chanted introduction, ‘Incantation for the Different’, before launching into a monologue critiquing the idea of “difference” in the modern class-system of society. Whilst pure in intention, the monologue does come off as slightly cliched – the idea of alternative bands painting themselves as the “voice of the voiceless and the different” has been around for decades; it does seem like it’s time to move on to some newer ideas. Fortunately, the buildup to the first song of the album ‘Wyches and Basterdz’ is then pulled off successfully – launching the album as a melodic yet melancholy sonic assault that provokes both emotion and thought from the listener.
Let’s get something straight – Parkway Drive are no longer the vicious metalcore outfit that Horizons or Deep Blue displayed. Their maturing and growth in sound and size has meant that their records have had to adapt and morph into something new. Luckily this is crafted with attention and skill, thus putting forward a formidable seventh album from one of metalcore’s longest-serving groups. Turn your speakers up to 100, give Darker Still the right attention front-to-back and you’ll be taken on a ride through this album that you’ll be very grateful for.
Opening the album with ‘Ground Zero’ you could be forgiven for thinking you’d heard an unreleased B-side from either of their last two records. Admittedly this may be a weaker start for some listeners, but rest assured that this is simply the relaxed entrance to an album that grows with intensity song-by-song. Following up with ‘Like Napalm’, fiery guitar tones and riff-laden groove are guided by soaring lead guitar work throughout in a song that contains all features of the Parkway Drive of the last few albums. A trio of singles then leads the listener into the middle of the album, with ‘Glitch’ and ‘The Greatest Fear’ suffixed by the near-ballad title track of the album ‘Darker Still’. The pre-released singles are tailed with the sixth track ‘Imperial Heretic’, a song taking the listener back to the days of ‘Ire’ by assembling all of the best elements of that album into a goosebump-inducing track.
The latest record from the self-proclaimed cosmic space punks WACO, Rock Spirit Absolute Joy is ten tracks of unbridled joy and punk empowerment that refuse to waver in the face of resounding adversity and sociopolitical misery. It’s hardly surprising though, given WACO’s long established penchant for finding the faintest of silver linings in the darkest of times. The quintet’s past two records – 2019’s Human Magic and 2020’s Hope Rituals – where released in the wake of the tragic passing of their former bassist Chris Cowley. But despite the heartbreaking background, they where both releases of positivity and love, offerings filled with mantras urging one to live their life with compassion and love. Rock Spirit Absolute Joy is a continuation of such teachings, one expressed with prismatic punk dynamism – for the most part.
Much akin to it’s predecessor, Rock Spirit Absolute Joy is a punk record in the most thematic of ways but in the loosest of sonics. Much like WACO themselves, it’ll be pointless to even attempt to tidily categorise it – there’s simply so much going on here. This is something proven with the one-two-three punch of the three opening tracks ‘Millionaire’, ‘The World’ and ‘Elevation’. Whilst the first in the trio is an almost frustrated and dirty punk rock expression of breaking free of society’s ills in the key of 80’s punk, ‘The World’ – one of the record’s most memorable moments – is a sunny pop anthem, complete with twinkly percussion and triumphant woodwinds optimised for bellowing out in the last of the summer heat. In contrast, ‘Elevation’ is an alt rock swagger that emits a sense of energetic punk carefreeness. Whilst these tracks an apt introduction to the styles of the record, Rock Spirit Absolute Joy has so much more to offer musically, with campfire rock, hardcore and late 20th century pop rock making welcome appearances as the record continues on.
However, when the group dropped Die On Mars in 2019, any resounding quires about the band where immediately answered. In fact, it wouldn’t be too hyperbolic to say that any mouths asking questions where stopped mid-inquiry in part to having their jaws hit the floor. Mastering the type of bewildering mathcore as absurdist as their namesake, Die On Mars cut through the noise generated by the hordes of fellow mathcore pursuitits emerging at the time and saw The Callous Daoboys become one of the most promising names within all things frantic, spontaneous and destructive. It was – and nigh on still is – a fantastic record, one that captured the zeitgeist of self-destructive mathcore that is used as a vessel to narrate the folly of modern life. Despite it’s retained brilliance however, it greatly pales in comparison to it’s successor; enter Celebrity Therapist – the current frontrunner for album of the year 2022.
To say this album builds upon what came before it would be a significant understatement. Whilst it is a continuation of the sound of Die On Mars – a record constructed upon the foundation laid by acts such as The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Chariot and Botch – Celebrity Therapist see’s The Callous Daoboys building their sound so high that the foundations lie miles below. The thrall of Gordian mathcore remains as the crux, but there’s so much going on in this record that to call it a mathcore record feels limiting and restricting to an insulting degree.
The work of Michael McGough and Joel Quartuccio has been symbiotic over the last decade. The two often fused together to make Being As An Ocean one of the most moving outfits you’re likely to come across. Quartuccio’s poetic, heartfelt lyricisms were always further compounded by McGough’s stunning melodies.
Living as the brainchild of McGough: Heart Of Gold exists on a new plain from Being As An Ocean. You won’t hear emotional firefights to the same degree here, nor will you experience the heartfelt beatdowns of a vocalist offering you his personal looking-glass. It makes sense for this to be the case: if McGough wanted to broach these stylings; he can just wait until the next BAAO record.
Instead, Beautiful Dangerous is a melting pot of pop-synths – bustling at the seams with explosive, flamboyant melodies. Any comparisons between the Brits former work would be futile: he’s chasing something new here.
He quickly puts his effervescent voice to good use – Headache has a melodic hook in its chorus that is irresistible. The late 90’s bounce of Patient follows suit too. McGough’s ponderings about when to fully commit to love have been well tread, but surrounded in these exuberant tones: they feel fresh.
With a performative concept that they describe as “neither a ritual, nor a concert”, the immersive ceremony of Heilung’s craft has endeared the band to anyone with an interest in history, paganism, fantasy, and traditional music; aided in part by its inclusion in hit series such as Game of Thrones and Vikings, as well as 2022 blockbuster The Northman. The aim of the project is to leave the listener in a relaxed state after taking us on a journey across a soundscape that is at times turbulent, but one that also connects us with our past heritage; achieving this through crafting instruments and sounds using only means and materials that would have been accessible during the Iron Age in Northern Europe; as well as with field recordings from nature.
As an album, Drif continues along this precedent set by Heilung in previous releases; yet also manages to build on it. ‘Asja (Protection)’ opens the album with enigmatically intense bass chanting followed by a melancholic bowed string riff and poetry that sets the scene perfectly for what is to come on this musical journey before ‘Anoana‘, the first single and video released from Drif, continues it. It is immediately surprising that the music manages to be simultaneously energising and relaxing; offering a chance for meditation and contemplation whilst also propelling the listener forward mentally into activity. There is a lot going on in each track, from the multiple crisscrossing vocal parts of male and female vocalists, to the percussion and instrumentation, to the background noises and field recordings that Heilung use to achieve this soundscape. If one listens closely, the ear can focus in on something different every time the album is played over, showing that the band have carefully planned out and thought about what they are offering to the listener sound-wise – nothing in the recording is there by accident; and the band have fully fleshed out their sound with a variety of different elements working together to create this journey.
