Knives : "GLITTER"

 

The cool thing about the nu-metal revival is you never know what the next batch is going to sound like. This band from Bristol takes punchy rapped vocals and slams them against a noisy racket of guitar clanging in a misshapen groove. They certainly got the more explosive elements down. The raps are not the Adidas-clad b-boy posturing, but are raw and honest. "I Hope You Get It" has a little hard-core influence, but bands like Korn and Deftones originally came from the hardcore scene in their early days, touring with bands like Sick of it All, Glass-Jaw, Thrice, and Will Haven. 

There are catchy chanted choruses that are more of a cheerleader feel than being a gang vocal for songs like "Eat Thy Neighbor," where you can also hear the influence of bands like Idles. "PHD" has a good deal of chaos being stirred up around it. They hammer you pretty hard in places before throwing a bouncing breakdown at you. Several members of the band are lending their voices to this album, with the rapped vocals as the main narrative. It does add some interesting sonic colors to the bigger picture of what they do. If things were just left to the main vocalist to carry the songs, it would feel one-dimensional.. 

 "Public Juice" finds the angular groove becomes more frantic as more noise is thrown in the mix at varying points. The album is organic in feel, yet they have captured some very unique sounds with a very dense mix of sounds dumped into these songs. "Post Macho" has more hook and groove to it, which plays to their favor, even amid some of the more abrasive aspects. "ULTRAVIOLET'" finds a more kinetic guitar riff jerking you around. You Think You Know" is more urgent in its uptempo drive. Sure, things get noisy, but these guys are doing something more involved than noise rock. The last track is more of a melodic jam-outro than a song, since it does not have a story to tell lyrically or compositionally. I will give this album a 9, despite being unsure how much I will actually listen to it, I think they are fairly original despite bringing a familiarity in the sonic colors, the work with it is more about how they arrange the pieces

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