The slightly non-cheery but realistic concept behind the album title is that “you’re born into the world as a blank canvas. As you meet people and experience things, you’re getting stained and torn up.”
Recorded a few weeks into the lockdown, the Boston five-piece literally shut themselves in the studio with legendary producer Will Putney. No one was getting in and no one was getting out. The resulting collection is a 12-track journey that reflects that danger and tension of that time period, and draws on some of the experiences the band have been through themselves between release of 2018 debut ‘Errorzone’ to now, four years and a pandemic later.
Beginning the album with a bright mix of surfy-jazz chords, dreamy alto lead vocals, and rapped backing vocals that sound straight out of a London-based grime track. It’s upbeat and it’s catchy, and most importantly, it already sounds unique straight from the start. The band claim to take influence from Rage Against the Machine and Dua Lipa, though on a first listen it sounds like Caro Emerald or Morcheeba decided to collaborate with various rappers and throw in the occasional rock and roll crescendo.
Pupil Slicer, Heriot, Vein.fm, Knocked Loose and Tallah have all begun to make their mark through sheer pulverization and the most mosh worthy beatdowns to emerge in some time, and now it’s time to welcome Michigan’s Wounded Touch to the fold. The musical statement they make on their debut record AMERICANANXIETY is nothing short of a brass knuckled punch to the face and a scalpel to the throat in the absolute best way; the way all those aforementioned bands before have done the same. This is a kick in the teeth record that takes no prisoners and does it in a style, especially vocally, all its own.
Does AMERICANANXIETY crush the listener in its bleeding fist from start to finish? It absolutely does, without question. Vocalist Nick Holland’s blood curdling shriek is almost disarming on opening track “On Serrated Heartstrings,” but as the track and record progresses, his unique style fits like a glove with the claustrophobic and sledgehammer riffs the band pounds out on song after song. The production definitely focuses on the low end, so what little leads there are get lost in the suffocating piledriver rhythm and bass, but damn if every second of this record doesn’t spur the urge to move and throw down.
Originating from the halls of a Minneapolitan college campus, these emotionally engaged Post-Genre freedom fighters serve us a constantly mutating experience, through their efforts to chase the thrills and spills of what feels like an alternate dimensional soundscape.
Kicking off the overall experience of LA! we found that the overarching musical journey to be pretty standard in its endeavour to create the best highs and lows imaginable, yet we believe the beginning of the albums progression would of greatly benefitted from a more stripped back approach to its overall production value, due to the acute yearning for painkillers setting in while enduring Early Eye’s several iterations of maximalist climaxes. Although instances of ear-splitting glitches bordered on the realms of overkill, which rapidly ravaged much hope of redemption or ability to get through the entire album, we found much more pleasant peyote-laced-like tracks to inspire a greater listening experience, including the band’s latest single ‘Dying Plant’ and the ominously named ‘Trust Fall’.
In the initial stages of exploring ‘Dying Plant’ we came to find that the track represented something of an enigma to us, due to the intro reminding us of an indie adaptation of Royal Coda covering the Sugababes 2006 single ‘Red Dress’; although such a comparison provides a fleeting hint of delight for a noughties pop classic, the progressive transformation into a truly intriguing blend of indie, synth and emo sensibilities, seemed to perfectly attach itself to the lyrical interpretation of social sustenance depravation through the metaphor of wilting plants.
Black metal has endured so long outside the confines of genre purists in part because of its malleability and ease of melding it with new genres. Copse are a new project from Ed Gibbs, best known as vocalist for the emotive post-metal outfit Devil Sold His Soul and, while there are definite similarities, Copse stands as its own blackened creation. Their debut release, Mara | Mondrem is a two-part EP composed of the two halves of the title and explores both black metal and the more familiar grounds of post metal, blending the two worlds until there’s no real distinction between the end of one and the start of another.
Hotly tipped as one of the most exciting prospects in the UK sludge scene, the duo of Tyler Hodges and Tom Dimmock collectively known as Tuskar finally unleash their highly anticipated debut album Matriarch. Blending psychedelically charged, brooding and relentless riff heavy doom with eerie, post-apocalypse soundscapes warping the world around you and triggering kaleidoscopic visions in your mind as you pass through the highly energetic fuzz. Brimming with ambition and ferocity, Matriarch is a masterclass in conglomerated sonic mass, a finely balanced display of atmosphere and aggression. This fierce and bold collection of songs demonstrate the band’s dedication to their craft, no doubt launching them with considerable ease into the upper echelons of the UK metal scene.
Throughout the album you can feel a monolithic churning energy, slowly creeping around you on all sides. Before the riffs crash around you like the roaring waves on the hardest of sea walls, Tuskar take significant time to build an eerie and ominous atmosphere that drags you into this doom laden world with remarkable ease. Despite being a young band, the duo show an incredible musical and songwriting knowledge that exceeds their years. With an acute knowledge and innate mastery of dynamics, Matriarch’s unique ebb and flow leaves and indelible mark on your mind. The psychedelic atmospherics lead into crushing, hardcore like breakdowns, where the album is channelling the turbulence of primal human rage. Every passage leads to something else, before ultimately being paid off by a riff-heavy climax. With a plethora of influences behind them, the incorporation of blast beats on a sludge record seems out of place, however it works extraordinarily well. Ramping up the energy and chaos before thrusting you back into a comatose state of droning riffs and foreboding, fuzz filled soundscapes. If Matriarch was to be summed up in emotional terms, sombre rage would spring to mind. The very visceral nature of these emotions in conveyed with a distinct maturity, which makes the album remarkably captivating.
