This Danish band is leaning further into their shoegazing influence for their latest Nuclear Blast release. Much like Deafheaven, there is a contrast between the music and vocals as the verse is more snarled, but with more of a hardcore fervor than black metal hatred. They excel at jerking the grooves back and messing with the rhythm. There is less metal in the second song. The sung vocals take a more pronounced role, though they are dynamically all over the place, which works since it's not the predictable good cop/ bad cop formula.
"Young" finds the guitar becoming much more metal. It's almost a European flavor of melodic progressive metal when the guitar melodies sweep in. The first two songs felt more solidified in their identity. There is more of an experimental balance on "Hud." At times, it feels like a shoe-gazing version of Kvelertak. "Garland' kind of splits the difference with a more hooky songwriting template over even the accelerated sections of guitar. The production is very clean and spacious, which makes me think of late 90s progressive metal coming out of Europe. "Favour" splits the difference with the first moments that feel like there might be a black metal influence to them in the vocals' screams.
The sung vocal hook works well on " A Former Blueprint" which is one of the best dynamically balanced songs so far ." Dissonance" proves that they are not just limited to using sung vocals when it comes to hooky songwriting. "Mimic" is more metallic, almost making me think of a band like Scar Symmetry. Very precise chugging. The solo section being perhaps almsot too clean. The last song might be one of the album's most accessible, with its rock-influenced riffs. The arrangements are more intersting than your typical verse-chorus, radio fodder, but the production and some of their musical choices could stand to be darker to peak my interest more; however, I will give this a 9 as it is well done. Dropping on Nuclear Blast.
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