It's becoming my job at Cvlt Nation to make sense of the weird and wonderful sounds of bands at a dark cross-roads after varied genres have collided. Which I would not have any other way as the one qualifying factor all music must have for me to like is is darkness. It doesn't matter if it's metal, punk or just some avant garde noise rock, all of which seems to be colliding on this album. The band's primary sound is dissonance which in turn creates their darkness. They have been labelled as hardcore, a term seriously brought into question by the guitar's 60s garage rock warble that off sets to more malicious metal edge of the vocals , that are not too far off from being black metal. I would say they are more firmly planted in punk than what we think of as hard-core. The layered vocals at the chorus on "Days" are no more hard core than anything from Darkthrone's black n roll days. The chaotically blurred genre lines aside they capture some mesmerizing sound and take the sound down some unexpected dark alleys. They have a rowdy metal attack that jumps out from behind the corner of songs. They abandon the sleeker song writing of the first two songs on "Body Melt" which carries a more rabid bite. This song also carries to most punk snarl the album has seen up til this point, though the guitar carries more of wild jangle.
They really hit a sonic high point on with the drone into "Peephole Maze" metal is undeniable and the fact that Ulver guitarist Trond Mjoen really seals the deal even after the "Richard Hung Himself" like swagger of "Give me Shame" . There sounds like a crooning vocal is buried deep beneath the guitar, but the predominant narrative voice of the song remains the rants of the rasping maniac. When the song end you find out there was another vocal trying to get out from under there. There is even a slight dreamy coat of noise to the pounding chords of "No Body" that give it a shoe-gaze feel, in turn making it sound like something Deafheaven might do. The vocals also are more for a humanized coating of white noise, which serves a similar purpose to Deafheaven's use of vocals. But unlike like the bands that are now beginning to come out of the wood work who are trying to sound like Deafheaven, this doesn't sound intentionally.
The bass line drags "Out Like a Like" from its drugged crusty slumber. This is allowed to simmer against a odd back drop of synths , with the angry vocals launching into more of an Eyehategod like raving. The punk rock comes out of no where and jerks the song around. Even though the album is aligned with chaotic spastic nature, the band shows incredible restraint. Vocals aside, They steer clear of any chances to blacken things up, which would have been an easy path to go down from considering the pedigree of some of the members.
The chromatic drone of "Fall" has a more post-pink feel, which the band hints at earlier in the album, their use of synths points into a more Killing Joke direction. Even though the title track just seems like an extension of the previous song being jammed out the album succeeds in being an album I can leave on and just let play, since obtaining a new 30 gb iPod Classic, I can indulge myself in leaveing things like this on my iPod and give myself more time to come to a conclusion, but for the sake of this review I will give the album a 9, and see where it grows from there.
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