Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, Welcome back to That's Not Metal. We are
your weekly rock and heavy metal podcast, Hardcore pertinently, I
guess starting off the news this particular week, we let
you know everything that's been going on in those worlds
in the past week. And we also here today for
our final reviews bag of twenty twenty four. We actually
left it slightly later than we might usually because we
are literally going to ride straight from here into album
of the year content as suit of December hits. But
don't jump to that straight away, because we do have
a last round of records to go all in about,
and they are not slouches ones that you should be
just forgetting about at the end of the year either,
So I'll let you know what those are in just
a moment. But my name is Peren Heish. Sam Dignon
is who is here with me to do with this?
Speaker 4: How are you doing? Sam?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna mean, I've been a bit ill for
the last couple of days, but I'm bouncing back and
just you know, ready to talk about some big old
album that.
Speaker 1: Just from being around all the gen z folks at
are Joey Vaalanson Bray.
Speaker 2: That might that may well have been it, you know,
going see Jamal Lanson Ray, who were absolutely amazing live.
They are like the real deal, so much fun. They've
already got, Like I said, a twenty song set list
of basically all hits powerfuct an hour, and I said,
the best.
Speaker 3: Time that might be, or it might have been at
all the all the metal core.
Speaker 4: Kids at very Tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's a medal called kids the Metalcore thirty year
olds who are just make up that band sund based now.
But you know those two gigs, both very different, both enjoyable.
Speaker 1: In their own Wayeah, there you go, pick your demographic
you think you're most likely to have developed a disease from.
I've got a very good weekend coming up when I'm
going to be seeing both Enter Shaikhari and Holder of
the Nice couple of days I have ahead of me,
but ahead of us right now on this schedule. As said,
for our final reviews bag of twenty twenty four, we
are going to be talking about the new albums from
a little band called Lincoln Park, a little band called
The Cure, a slightly more little band but still kind
of sizable band, Opeth, Better Lovers, Many Eyes, Tribulation, and
Neon Nightmare, and before we get that, we also have
I guess our last news roundup of the year. Anything
happens after this point, well we'll get to it in January.
Speaker 4: But it's not a bad slate.
Speaker 1: Of news either in terms of some really exciting stuff
that's happened, some exciting news and.
Speaker 2: Great stuff from my end of things, like it's been
an exciting couple of days on that front.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And I guess we'll just start with the
thing that happens that everyone on you know, the timeline
has been talking about, which is not Loose playing Jimmy
Kimmel playing their song Suffocate. I guess, you know, just
newly nominated for a Grammy. So that's the push there,
but with you know, Poppy running out for the guest
feature as well. And this has been all anyone who
wanted to talk about for the past couple days, I
suppose because it's weird this because when like we got
the announcement they would be on Jimmy Kmble last week,
and I wasn't surprised because I don't know something about
the last few years of how like the platform that
hardcore bands have, you know, managed to be given again
I can't recall an exact list of what bands have played,
what shows or whatever, but like, you know, bands like
Turnstile going on to play these kind of you know,
big American late night shows and stuff like that. Even
a band as heavy as not Loose, they are clearly
so popular and so one of the bands of the
moment that I was like, yeah, it makes sense. So
I saw the announcement and I bizarrely, I don't know,
I didn't get excited by I suppose I thought it
was cool, but I wasn't like this would be you know,
it didn't shock me with that mindset watching the video clip.
There was still something just so powerful about the performance,
just utterly like you know, blasting out at you from
me just watching it on YouTube that I I genuinely
I was hit by emotions that I did not even
feel from like and no seeing them be announced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's the things I was like, oh yeah, cool, No,
this feels like the year they've had, they they've riding away. Then,
I mean, this is going back to like the early
twenty tens. This sting would happen really quite common. There
would just be the metalcore band of the moment who
released their album, they were on one of these talk
shows and then they kind of disappeared for a while.
Turnstile You're Out when the sort the first one to
sort of come back to it, but not close.
Speaker 3: It felt so natural doing it. I was like, this
is really cool.
Speaker 2: And I was like, there sort of like some thirteen
year old who's just watching Jimmy Kill was about to
have their life change, and I was like, I think
that could be it. But then yeah, when it came
to the actual performance, seeing them on there look in
the business and it not being the sanded down kind
of like for TV not Lose. They had Piro, the
crowd was fucking going for it, and then after the beat,
Brian letting out that pig squeel, and I was just like,
this is this is what I've been waiting for.
Speaker 3: This is what we've been needing.
Speaker 2: Again, just a moment of like genuine extremity on mainstream
TV from our.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think incredible stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think part of my again, my initial kind
of reaction to them being booked, maybe it's because again,
like you know, I'm English, I don't really know much
of the difference between like a Jimmy Kimmel and a
Jimmy Fallon or a Seth Myers or whatever like pup
went on back in.
Speaker 4: The day, didn't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I could definitely tell from the video clip
here that this is one of like the biggest ones
that they could feasibly do, Like that outdoor there was
a big.
Speaker 2: Outdoor stage in the rain and the crowd don't give
a crowd are like fuck it, this is not.
Speaker 1: Like and the sight of them, like you know, on
that big stage on TV with the pyro going off,
and then as you say, the rain just like adding
to it. At the point there's there's a brilliant shot
in the clip where the cameraman is I guess, like
you know, down below aiming up at Brian as he
does the pig squeal and the rain is visible in
front of him, and it's just like, this is just
one of the most carnage fueled, epic things that had
surely ever played on something like this. And you know,
there's been so much praise going not Lose his Way
over the course this year for being a band who
are breaking certain ceilings without honing away their you know,
their their heaviness and their weirdness, like at all, if anything,
only you know, dialing that more in and seeing that
happen like this was. It's it's one those moments along
with like gadjear at the Olympics this year, that you
can like just show people and be like, look how
cool this is? You know, isn't this awesome? And just
the energy raiding out of it was serious. So that
was like amazingly cool to see. As you also said,
the hardcore kids have basically been the ones really having
their kind of next year planned this week because we
have received two lineup announcements from Outbreak. The first is
for the main Outbreak, you know, Manchester, based of all
that has has been kind of said this year, is
taking place over two days this year, the Manchester part
of this and it is headlined by Knocked Loose, Alex
G and Slow Dive, which is three bands you could
only ever put neck culture that I guess Outbreak. I mean,
I barely know who Alex G is. I've heard he's
like a more like a singer songwriter type guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think there's like low fi, hip hoppy bits there
as well. Yeah, I mean I wouldn't say any ofth.
Speaker 1: I don't know at all, what the crossover of that
into hardcore is. Maybe it is a thing that hardcore
crowds are just like really into that I'm completely unaware of.
But Slow Dive there as well, like you know, Shoe
Gay's legends OG that's kind of cool. And then over
the rest of the lineup just some of the things
that pop out Sunny Day Real Estate, which would I
guess we'll talk about more and My Moment because they're
on the other one as well. But God's Hate are
there at the Manchester show, Death Heaven are there at
the Manchester Show again, and I guess that like in
a weird way, Death Heaven is like what's slipping here
for what is on the London show. The London show
is taking place at Victoria Park in London where many
many years ago I saw Judas Priest at my first
ever rock or metal show. And it has a lot
of the same bands, not all of them, like God's
Hey aren't there, Death Eavan aren't there, but a lot
of the same bands, but it is topped off by Turnstile.
Presumably the whole splitting of the dates and everything they
said it was around headliner availability, so presumably Turnstile are
only available for that day. I don't know what exactly
else they are doing. Maybe we will see, but there
is this bizarre splitting of the Outbreak kind of demographic
expose into two different dates with mostly the same but
slightly different stuff. I either side, I guess as someone
who in theory would have the capability to go to both,
but you know, you could choose either. Or what are
your feelings about the overall the bands that they've booked
and the kind of division of them or so firstly.
Speaker 2: On the division thing, it's worth mentioning that Outbreak London
is technically another festival. It's a different festival event being round.
Speaker 1: I thought there was a little bit of controversy as
well about the fact that the London show has to
have a barrier, which whether like Victoria Park or ever
have gone, you can't do this here. If you have
a barrier that does remove some of the outbreaking the
Outbreak appeals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's actually part of this event, Lido Festival,
which is running. It's one of those kind of like
a bit like All Point these kind of things. It's
running a series of like day festivals. The day after
Turnstile do the Outbreak one Charlie XCX is doing a
day at the exact same part of the exact same festival.
What this what they have said this is this is
part of this Lido festival thing, but it's a day
that's been curated by Outbreak. So again I don't know
for sure. My guess is at this point is that
this life festval is going to be booking Turnstile for
their their rock day.
Speaker 1: They ye, that's cool if Outbreak have almost been given
the curation role of like yeah and do something.
Speaker 2: And that's what it feels more like is Outbreak have
kind of been like collaborated with to kind of put
together a lineup that can appeal for this Like first
of all, that is pushing cool, new exciting music and
they've kind of part of Outbreak. So for me, an
Outbreak event in London super convenient like that for me,
I ain't got to get a hotel, I ain't gonna travel.
I am at the moment likely to just be doing
the London date this year just because of the other
big shows and other things I've got going on around
the summer. It's a convenience thing. I also really really
really want to see Turnstile and the other. If this
one band hadn't been on the London deck, no, they've
only been a Manchester I would have done the mans
on which is sunny Day Real Estate. As you've mentioned,
they're playing their first UK shows in fifteen years.
Speaker 4: I didn't even realize that, but that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: Nineties Emo Legends, their album Diary is like phenomenal. They
have not played the UK since twenty ten, so that
makes them They're in the poison the world. They're the
poison the world of this year's outbreak, of the long
overdue returning bands who haven't played the UK and ages,
So that to me is there. I mean, there's things
I can have a nice life on this night, which
is one of those weird out there booking stout break.
That's really cool that they're doing both. Danny Brown I
quite like Danny Brown. I wouldn't necessarily go see make
his own show, so here on this are line up
that that's really convenience.
Speaker 3: Speed is still doing both. That would be great.
Speaker 2: Knock Loose, as I mentioned, they're headlining the Manster one,
they are on the undercard in the London one, and
there is still more to come.
Speaker 3: Again, the Barrier situation.
Speaker 2: It's it's the price I have to pay if I
want to go to a big outdoor hardcore show without
having to go all the way to Manchester for it.
I'm still weighing up potentially hopping on an overnight National
Express or getting a train early in the morning to
do the Manchister as well. That's kind of a bit
of up the debate at the moment. But I think
just looking at both these lineups again, Outbreak are offering
something that no other festival can offer or is choosing
to offer that.
Speaker 3: You look at the Magic headline, there's this whole not
Loose Alex G Slow Dive.
Speaker 2: That's a kind of like really nice kind of cross
section of all the areas, Like Outbreak are kind of
playing with slow Dive, you know, the Shu gay Ze.
Most stuff that you've got that they're knock loose are like,
I mean, that's not loose. The day before this, Jimmy
kimmelset goes live and everyone kind of goes, holy shit,
look at not Loose Live's that's like a no brainer.
I think, like really strong that there's definitely seems to
be a bigger hardcore focus of the Manchester one so
I wonder if the London one is going to actually
not have as much hardcore, but it's still cool to
see Outbreak as festival kind of making bigger moves and
looking to expand. It's kind of branding reputation and off
of something that that is sort of unique to them.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean she mentioned actually Slow Diver on the Manchester
date but not the London date. But I didn't even
like put it together. But yeah, like Turnstile and Knocked
Loose in one day on the that London one is like,
you know, the two enormous you know on the up
Parkle bands of that generation. So that's a big model
actress as well, which is we spoke about that record
on that Yeah, we did it on the album Roulette
with Alice different Ashenspire, which you went on the episode,
but we did say SA would like the record.
Speaker 4: Did you ever check that out?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: I did that.
Speaker 2: I was it was very cool. Yeah, quite different. But
I also anyone was like, was that oh yeah, that
was that band that was on the.
Speaker 4: So that's fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean obviously line up wise, it's it's looking
really really good. I guess the question is there was
a lot of like, oh my god, Outbreak is clashing
with download? What does that mean in terms of sales
or anything. I think me and you are on the
same page that it basically means fuck all in terms
of sales, because they're completely different, demographic different. But the
more pressing concern is Outbreak competing with themselves. Does the
fact that there are two Outbreak days, one in London
and one in the North do you feel like that
at all will play into I don't know the success
of either event.
Speaker 2: I mean I did see a lot of people being like,
why do I have to travel to London see Turst.
I was like, suck it up. I've had to travel
to Manaster every year for Outbreak. It happens, you're going
to travel for some shows. I do think there will
there will definitely be a lot of people who will
do both. There will be some people who just go.
I mean, if one's going to lose out, I think
it might be the London one in terms of the
core Outbreakordians. But I also think the London one might
be looking to appeal to UE to not the Outbreak
Ordians in the way, even though it's an Outbreak show,
Because again, all the London casuals.
Speaker 4: Who aren't going to travel to the big one.
Speaker 2: But also it has turst Off, who are a bigger
band who appeal beyond hardcore. It's part of another kind
of festivent that's going to be promoting it in a
field where Outbreak wouldn't be promoting. So I think it's
going to be a different thing. But I think that's right.
They've get more competition for themselves. I hope that both
events go amazingly and pull in huge crowd and everyone
has a great time, Like and Outbreak. Can s trot
this up as a winning their column for trying for
different expanding and if not, then they'll probably just go
back to just running bowlers and I'll be fine with that.
Speaker 3: I'll travel up that next year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: An announcement that came this week that I just thought
was absolutely mind blowing, but it's really wonderful is that
power Wolf are going to be co headlining grass Pop
Festival in Belgium with Iron Maiden. If you wondered how
Europe was doing and where power Wolf are out over there,
make it happen over here. I say, something that is
happening over here is the news that Electric call Boy
are playing a date at Alexandra Palace in London next
year as part of a larger, you know, big European tour,
and Sam you are on record very regularly as being
not at all that electrical cor boy.
Speaker 4: But isn't it.
Speaker 1: Wild that that band who used to be you know
that other different name are now there where you saw
fucking I know Jimmy Wilder every the week.
Speaker 2: Like I've kind of I don't know, I've given up
this fight. But when you look at the step of
a male core bands and I'm like, you know what,
let call Boy be big there at least they at
least have a personality and they're doing something different, I
still think it's rubbish, but you know it's it's it's
it's huge Now I don't have the energy and meters
sort of carry on doing it when there are greater
evils out there and an Electric call Boy. So good
for them. I hope everyone who goes has a lot
of fun time dancing to their silly music.
Speaker 1: Here here I agree with with with all of that
belief from within who are also their supporting step not
on their UK dates very very soon, but beyond that,
over that particular hill. They have announced their largest ever
Europe and UK tour dates Here in the UK they're
can be playing the O two Kentish Town four in London,
along with other dates in Manchester and Glasgow. That is
the idea of bleaking within playing the forum almost has
crept up on me, like that feels quite large. So
good for them if that is to you know, sell
very well and and and go accordingly. Arch Enemy I've
also announced a really big European tour next year, and
I am I'm I'm an arch Enemy fan, but I'm
an Arch Enemy fan who has like seen them, you know,
so many times and doing kind of largely similar shows
that I think in order to like really get me
to be like, yeah, I need to see Arch Enemy
again would be if they brought a really big great
bill with them and they are bringing with them a
morphous elevatey and gate Creeper, which Gate Creeper do stick
out like a sore thumb there, But you know, there's
a melodethie a morphous influence on that new record, for sure.
I've got a real soft bot for Elevator. They're one
of my favorites of that particular kind of crowd of
like two thousands folk metal bands, one of the more
serious ones. Sam They're not you know, they're not a
Fintrol or whatever, and a MorphOS are like, you know,
the classic band on that line. So like if you
are into you know, kind of European style melodic heavy
metal with Gatecreeper on fucking opening that bill as well, Like,
that's genuinely a really stat time and may be very
very tempting. Indeed, we have the exciting news that Saxon's
Wheels of Steel tour is going.
Speaker 4: To be hitting the UK.
Speaker 1: That already, that's the European dates for that, but if
you want to see them doing Wheels are Steel in
full along with a selection of tracks from hell Fire
and Damnation of this year, they're going to be playing
a good ten dates in the UK and Ireland in
November of next year. Employed to Serve have announced this
is quite brilliant because I'm don't quote me on this,
I may be wrong, but I feel like I remember
them saying the Damnation show, this is our last show
of twenty twenty four, so I get the inkling that
this has been offered quite last minute and they've gone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, why not.
Speaker 1: Employees are going to be opening two shows for Usk
you Alexandria in the UK next month in Norwich and Birmingham.
If you're going to those two dates, as everything unfolded,
band who are in between them, which means employed to serve,
are thoroughly the scariest band on that bill, and I say,
go for it. Embrace that role of being like, yeah,
will be the scariest nliest band on this bill.
Speaker 2: What a mad Sammy and Justin bullying that crowd in
the way that they are known to like that they
are because you know what they will, they will pick
on a crowd to get them involved. And sam in Justina,
I would like to see that like, you know what, Yeah,
you're right, be the scariest band.
Speaker 4: Go for it.
Speaker 1: The idea that a Daddy Warsknop is going to have
just einan savvy as you say, coming out on the
stage first thing is so wild but very very funny. Indeed,
there's been a good run of Incineration Festival announcements recently.
Incineration is the fest next year that has the the
you know UK absolute elsewhere show for Blood and Cantation.
It has tripped to con before me a Celtic Frost set.
A whole bunch of good stuff's been added on there.
It's been adding quite a lot of death metal recently,
like them, so that's your sanctuary on their Cryptopsy got
added which who I've never seen before, so that's exciting.
But there will a really good black metal announcement today
with Lamp of Murmur being added to that bill as well,
which yes, I will take like the fucking fourth UK
Lamp of Murma show that I've managed to catch, but
one of the best, you know, black metal bands in
the world today. That's very, very exciting. Quite surprising news
I found is that Jason Evans, the like forever frontman
of the Manchester slam Brutal DEATHMTAL band Ingested, split with
them this week and they're going to be in a
continuing on as a band and I don't know, he's like,
he's the guy who I envision in Ingested and Ingested
are one of the first like three Ingested albums I
was like really really big on. They have kind of
moved in a direction that I am less keeping tabs
on these days where it's become a lot more I
don't know, a lot more serious, like a lot more
kind of clean, techie that style of death metal, rather
than like the shit I really loved from Ingested. But yeah,
really like surprising news that interest The are gonna be
moving on with a different front man, because, as I said,
he's been the guy forever. Berry Tomorrow have announced that
their new album is going to be coming out in
May of next year. There's a single out from that,
There's I haven't seen the track list here, but I
presume there was a couple of other things as they
put out already, haven't they, So I would make the
guess that they will be on that record. I don't
really want to talk about the single here. What I
am most interested and kind of highlighted here is that
the album is called will You Haunt Me? With that
same patience and the album cover. You know, I feel
like we wraggle on this certain group of bands who
are making certain choices quite a lot. And I don't
mean to just like, you know, repeatedly beat the same
kind of dead horse. But I was thrown for such
a loop by seeing this album cover with that title on,
because the album cover is this kind of, you know,
same kind of artsy photograph of you know, like a
room with a couple of figures in with the album
title with the same font in the middle that just
reeks of like bad omens Sleep Tooken, like Holding Absence one,
I guess, like you know the Loathe album that I
can never remember the title of, so just in my
head is the Loathe album, you know, But like there's
this certain aesthetic and kind of I don't know, cadence
of language that this group of kind of more trendy
modern bands users like you know, the Holding Absence but
like the greatest mistake of my life or whatever, Like
as I said, the Loathe album are it took everything? Yeah,
the the you know, the sleep token. This will be
your tomb whatever, And they will have this same kind
of like stark art housey.
Speaker 3: It's like minimalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this I don't seeing Barry Tomorrow. Did this
album cover just gave me such bad vibes? You know
they will have the same. I mean, I'm never gonna
like this is not how you get an iconic album title,
you know what I mean? Like I've already fucking forgotten
what this title is. This same like, you know, would
you still poo poo with the lights on if I
do do in the dark, the same fucking kind of
just overly wordy, pretentious kind of language with as said,
the same kind of like art how stock photo on it.
You know, I haven't heard the album yet, maybe it'll
be great whatever. I can't say anything about that just yet,
but I can say that just seeing this album cover
just it it feels bad in a way that is,
I know, quite hard to put a pin on, but
just in a when you see bands doing what everyone
around them is doing. That's the vibe I get from
this album cover.
Speaker 4: And I don't like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I know you do, but like going
off of the Lasting in particular, it's got a bit
of that sound to it going on as well. When
I was like just I was like, do I want
Barry to Night to be doing this when they always
kind of like march their own beat and we're very
individualistic in a time where a lot without chasing trends,
so we'll see.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 1: But just I was just so taken aback by that
title and Carver. I was like, Wow, you're really We're
all just doing that, aren't we. Oliver have been releasing
almost the whole year, a series of singles that they
always said was kind of you know, they're just putting
them out as they go along, but eventually it would
sort of largely formulate an album. They've taken that kind
of particular route this time. I do think it's worth
reporting that, you know, today as this goes out. Friday
the twenty ninth, the actual Ulva album, consisting of about
ten songs or so that they've kind of a mathed
over the year, is out, and so I definitely need
to go listen to the Ulva album this weekend because
the last couple are amazing. But you know, if you're
interested in new Ulva, they do have an album out today,
an Electric Wizard. I've also announced a live album called
Black Magic, Rituals and Perversions, Volume one. It's going to
be out on December thirteenth, Happy Birthday to Me, and
it is. They've described it as basically being a something
that they recorded onto a sixteen track tape in their
rehearsal room, I think during COVID, and I got really
excited by that because I was like, yeah, like I
want it to sound absolutely awful, Like I want this
to be like just the grimiest, rawest like electronically. Yeah,
And I got sent the promo for this, and the
track I checked out actually sounded less shitty than I
wanted to, Like I really wanted like the live and
Leipzig style Electric Wizard live album treatment. But I guess
for most normal people that would probably be an endorsement
that is going to sound pretty fucking good. But you know,
the track list is eight of the best doo metal
songs ever recorded. It's been a long time since Electric
Wizard have released anything of much kind of weight, really,
so it's going to be exciting to give that particular.
Speaker 4: One a spin.
Speaker 1: So I guess before we get into the meat of
this episode, we should shout out what we've been doing
on the Patreon this past week, because we have for
the past two weeks, I guess, been putting together a
fucking substantial special over on over there where we do
our full, you know, proper deep, lengthy musical dives. We
did it, as you probably may know if you've listened
to the last couple of episodes here on the year
twenty fourteen, really traversing what was going on in heavy
music in that year, all of the trends, checking on
every single scene. The first part we did was largely
about like the really big visible end of metal. This
second part was essentially ended up being divided into two
parts because we had a part that was all about
you know, kind of punk rock and alternative rock and
emo and that kind of thing, more mainstream rock as well,
and then a part that was all about the the underground.
We went through kind of all of the you know,
other big publications like albums of the year and saw
if they held up or not. Spoilers, the Rolling Stone
one is the one that does not hold up the most.
That the one I was most shocked to see when
we put out like the thumbnail for the first part,
with all the little, you know, silly images we put
on there on genuinely multiple people comment on that, being like,
where's the Satanist? Why is the Satanist not here? And
I was like, guys, it's coming, dot worry. Let's we
did here in this part talk about of course the Satanist.
We have I think the most fun Nickelback album to
talk about in my personal experience. If you want to
know what twenty fourteen brit rock albums Sam and Mark
hate that, I defend in a switch to the usual
state to quote one of that is in there, and
we also have again the kind of latter part of it,
one of the biggest extreme underground roundups that we're ever
likely to do at all, because countless albums that year
that I would describe as like legit classics of their scene.
And then at the very end of it, we all
four of us who are on that all picked our
own album of the year for that year, and that
was again kind of really in depth talk as well,
because we all have strong connections to whatever our album
of the year was that year. And as has been
kind of requested, we also made available with the you know,
the Patreon upload a big playlist of every album that
was mentioned in the special, almost every album, but it
means that it's probably the only players on Spotify that
features both like five seconds of Summer and sun I
guess like it. You know, last time I asked you
what in you know, this last kind of session that
we did, what albums were did you listen to? Where
you were like, oh, this is a real trip down
memory lane.
Speaker 2: I mean part of the brick the brit Rock one
was kind of like that, because again that was the
other obviously where metalcore was like my big kind of
thing that the brit rock and emo stuff was where
I lived. The one for me though it was actually
was the Satst which again probably like in terms of
extreme metalams I really I really loved. It's probably the
second one after the Wild Time. It's all come out
and go, God, this is this and this makes extreme
metal makes sense to me, and kind of thinking back
to when I first heard Blow or Trumps Gaby and
it would be like, fuck me, this is like the
real deal that and then probably the weird and wonderful
Marmosets going back to that album and just again just
being like, oh, this is changing the game in brit rock.
Speaker 3: This is like the new bar that bands.
Speaker 2: Should aspire to to do something that is like catching
and so interesting. Sopil a character the same old like
beij stuff that I actually really like a lot of it.
It's not gonna hold up anymore, and a lot of
those bands it did hold up anymore in the wake
of that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, there was there was a lot.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was a lot of extreme metal which
I was going like, not a clue what you want
about here?
Speaker 4: And it was a busy Me and elliots extensive list.
Speaker 2: You and Elliott were like, yeah, gorgeous, there's there's there's
some albums there that I need to probably find some
time because they sound like they could be stuff certainly
I do.
Speaker 4: Vibe with at some point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I personally it's this and this, I guess reinforced
that for me, the shearer amount we had. I would
say it's my personal favorite music year that I have
like actually like you know, lived through and kind of
engage with in that sense, like the best year that
I can remember for the sheer amount of albums I
love and how much I love them. They were all
in this special and that made it really special and unbelievable,
And if you want to hear all of that, then
you can go to patron dot com slash That's not Mattle.
This year template, I think, is one that we are
gonna obviously we'll be doing another one fucking straight away,
but it is one that we will stick with and
we will return to it again in a completely different
era as well. So if you want to hear that
enormous piece of work, which everybody's been very kind about,
then that's my Patreon is the play to go. I
also should point out right now that if you are
listening to this on you know, February, fucking will, that'd
be weird to listen to February when you the twenty ninth.
I don't know why I said February, the twenty ninth
of November. As this goes out, then the album of
the Year listener poll for the listener album of the
year is opening up. Now what you need to do
is the main I guess poll comments poll will be
in the that some metal focus group on Facebook, which
are the same place where we go to ask for
questions for the show and stuff like that. If you
go over there, there will be a pinned post with
the kind of suggestion of how to lay out your
your records and so on, and you just need to
comment your top twenty albums of the year under that.
If you do not have Facebook because you know, like
fuck the cirk or whatever, then you can, you know,
you can get it to us by other social channels.
You can like dm us on you know, Twitter or Instagram,
or you know, if you are a member of the
TNM Patreon disc you can pop it in there and
we will count it as well. Just get us through
those various means which everyone is easiest for you your top
twenty albums of the year, and they will factor into
the poll. There will be rules, you know on that
the Facebook post of how to format your albums, like
you know, twenty down to one, so on whatever, please
follow those rules. Do not be the person who is different.
Look how everyone else is doing it, and do it
like they're doing it, because if you are different, it
is just very very annoying for us compiling all together.
So please be considerate in that guard. But it's not
too hard, is it. And you have got about two
weeks to do this. There will be a closing date
listed as part of that as well, but you know
it's not even needed for like next week when we
start our arm the other thing that you'll be on
the show after that, So you've got a couple of
weeks to put this together. We are just opening the
voting now. So if you do not have your top
twenty albums of the year ready, right the fuck now,
that's fine, you know, just go and have a thing
and get back to us within you know, the couple
of weeks and you can give us those when you
are ready, and that will mean that it will get
counted into the listener album of the poll. It's a great
help for us because if no one voted, then we
wouldn't have a fucking list to read out to you,
would we. And yeah, very very curious to see how
all that comes out this year. But go ahead, have
a think, come back, do that before you go and
do that, you should, I guess, give some consideration to
the albums that we are about to talk about in
this our final reviews show of twenty twenty four. There
might be some albums you haven't heard. I would make
a wager that the first album we're going to talk
about is probably the one you are perhaps most likely
to have heard. Well, you're going to start with a
new album from Lincoln Park called from Xenu. Oh sorry, sorry,
I mean from Zero. Okay, So it's it's fun somehow
that we can start our final review show of the
year with the single biggest rock album of the year.
Like this really has been staged, And I'd like to
point out it hasn't always been like this for Lincoln Park,
like Lincoln Parker, like the obviously massive Forever, but not
every album they've released has been positioned as like the
big unmissible rock event of the year, the way that
it absolutely has been this time. The whole comeback of
Lincoln Park has made them, for as much as they've
always been big, undeniably a much much bigger deal now
than they have been in many years, right, biggest they've
been since like the mid to late naughties.
Speaker 2: I'd say, on like Minutes to Midnight where they were
the Transformers band two, We're everywhere, Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's huge, all of those sottled out stadium
shows and everything. The breakthrough of singles from this onto
like actual pop charts again when no one does that anymore.
Everything about this has been pushed in a way that
is telling you that Lincoln Park are literally the biggest
rock band in the world again in a way that
they haven't been, which I guess that mindset is how
I suppose I'm coming into this album. It's less so
actually the emotional narrative of them having lost Chester, because
let's be frank here, I find it difficult to have
much emotional investment in how this Linkin Park reunion goes
because i'd like, you know, like peak at their best.
Lincoln Park, I think is great and in some sense
it's nice having them around when they're operating at their
higher levels, you know. And the loss of Chester Bennington
was like, of course, like a real one that I
think hit a lot of us, even those who weren't
you know, like Megger hardcore linking part fans. I think
it hit a lot of people harder than we may
have expected, losing Chester the way that we did, but
then the way Lincoln Park have come back with Emily
Armstrong who immediately within hours of the announcement was outed
as a probable member of the Church of Scientology, an
organization with various serious accusations of bigotry and sexual criminality
and whatever else. Kind of leveled at it, not to
mention the dealers to jgitimization of mental health, which is
a particular thing with you know, stepping into the shoes
of Chester and her having appeared in support of the
rapist Danny Masterson his trial, all that stuff. The controversy
was cedric from at the drive in kind of slamming
and discrediting her like public statesment that she made on
the matter. There was the controversy with Chester Bennington's son
calling them out on it. We just it's so much
to deal with that. We had the conversation on the
news show that week where we basically just kind of
washed our hands and said, we don't know how the
fuck these multimillionaire members of the Hollywood elite think, Like,
we don't know what train of thought led them to
that situation and that choice. We don't know how they
internalize or interact with what normal people think of that
kind of action. You don't know what conversations or connections
have been had kind of behind closed doors. And ultimately
I always felt before hearing this album that engaging with
it on the level of had they chosen to like
largely posit it as I don't know, a tribute to
Chester or whatever, it would be difficult to take one
hundred percent in that way. And like, you know, like
much Shoda or whoever it is in the band, Like
I'm I'm sure that they do think about losing their
friend and whatever else, Like I would never say anything
like that to the country. But also this album doesn't
majorly feel like a Black Gis Way to Blue or
like you know, the Gray Chapter or whatever, where it
has the clear energy of like being haunted or wounded
by something like that, that's just not the way they
seem to have put this album together. It carries itself
in a different way. And by the time they'd released
the second single from this, they were making it a
legal Legends promotion. So I am not really judging it
in that sense. I am judging it more as here
is a new set of songs by mega massive band
linkin Park.
Speaker 4: Is that clear?
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think that's family. I agree.
Speaker 2: I think this album has very much like there are
definite moments where it feels like there is you know,
some reference to Chesta and the sort of passing on
of things and all that. That's not to say the
album is completely divorced with that, but it does feel
a lot more like a kind of like we've not
been an active band for seven, eight how many years,
we're now getting back at it. This is a new
set of songs to sort of start a new era,
just after a long long absence, regardless of the reason.
Speaker 3: And they have, you know then just kind of like
pushed on.
Speaker 2: The songs are just you know, getting massive alia play
that they're like say League of Legends World Championship soundtrack
sort of material. It's all just feeling very much like
a this is just Lincoln Park coming back to be
a huge band. I wish something didn't have the baggage
that surrounds it with Emily, because I wish I could
talk about a returnal Linker Park album purely on the
merit of yeah that is offered because Linkol Park are
a hugely important band to me. I fell off with
them towards the end of the twenty tens when they
were releasing One More Light. I don't subscribe to the
revisionism around that album that came in the way of
just as like really tragic passing, and I understand that
that I'm gained a different emotional weight in sort of
the after math of that. I still don't think it's
a very good album, and I think it's almost like
disrespectful to kind of like pretend that you always liked
when everyone was shitting on that album a lot of
the time. So I was ready to just kind of
like take on a new look back and go, Okay,
this is the band I used to love and have
love for a long while. How is it stacking up?
There is all of the other baggage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm parking all of that baggage at the door
now for the rest of this review, Yes, but I'm
just saying, you know, it's worth acknowledging and also worth
pointing out or recognizing how it may majorly interfere with
the genuine emotional connection that someone may form with an
album like this if there's stuff like that around it.
As I said on that terms, I'm just treating as okay,
Lincoln Parker being positioned as the biggest band in the
world again, does this album you know merit that? And
my mind goes back to again just by chance, We've
been recording the Patreon specials on the year twenty fourteen
the last couple of weeks, and Lincoln park released an
album that year called The Hunting Party that we spoke about,
and that album is low down on the list of
things that spring into your mind when you think of
the biggest album the twenty fourteen like it's almost completely
forgotten about. And you know, the other guys on the
special had negative things to say about that album, the
things about it that don't work or were bad ideas,
And I don't necessarily disagree with those points, but because
that album has a good like three four songs on
it that I think are of a decent quality. I
would say it's my favorite Lincoln Park album of the
twenty tens era. That album was almost immediately forgotten about
in the year it was released twenty fourteen. As we
said when they headlined download that year, it was all
about the fact they were doing hybrid theory, nothing about
the fact that they were on this new album, The
Hunting Party, and so that album is not positioned by
all of us as the most significant rock band in
the world Lincoln Park releasing their new album, this album
is positioned like that, and yet I think it has
a hit rate almost exactly like no better than The
Hunting Party.
Speaker 4: I see where you're coming from.
Speaker 2: I think this is the quite comfortably the best link
of Park have been since, at the very least of Suns.
I'm a bigger thousand Suns defender. There are problems I
recognize with this album, but every time I listens, kind
of go like, I've just found some like outside of
the baggage quite hard to dislike.
Speaker 1: I'm actually quite surprised by by that, because I think
it's you. It's barely over half an hour of I
like that about it. Yeah, well, I mean in theory
I do as well. Barely a half an hour of
very slickly highly produced radio metal Lincoln Park. You know,
it's not the raw garagie you know, Hunting Party thing,
and so it's obviously the closest thing they've done to
classic Lincoln Park since their first you know, three albums,
and I think that is what powers its best moments,
because I mean, let's face it, I don't think Lincoln
Park are accomplished at being a multi disciplined band. Every
time they tried something different over the course of twenty tens,
something about it went wrong. Whether you are an apology
of certain records or not, I don't think they are.
They're not good at being any of the various bands
they try to be.
Speaker 4: They were good like A Thousand Suns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a that's a me thing, and I
can recognize that album. What adds some is weird, as
most of mymal moments. Unless you're you're You're me, you
might find that go like, that's stupid, what are they doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm an apologist for parts of like the
Hunting Party, But do I think they're better at being
like raw garage rock Lincoln Park than just being linkin Park.
Speaker 4: No, I don't.
Speaker 1: I agree, And so I think an album that largely
seems to try and be like Meteora twenty twenty four
is probably the best possible outcome of what they would
try and come back and being, even if that blatant
nostalgia very much reads as an attempt to ease fans
into a version of the band with a different lineup,
because I think this album contains the best Lincoln Park
material in over fifteen years, and also every other song
when it is absolute nothing, I wouldn't say every song
there are.
Speaker 4: Maybe being generous when I say every other.
Speaker 2: Song, I think there are maybe like three songs on
here that I kind of go like, okay, you're doing
that thing, because to me, this album almost does feel
like a bit like it's trying to touch on on
every era of Lincoln Park, just a little bit like
the main focus of it is hybrid theory. I'd say
Meteora minutes to me like that kind of like link
Apark when they're out their biggest doing that, and then
they they'll at least try one song that will try
and sound like a bit like a Thousand Suns and
a bit like and those songs are are the weakest moments.
I would agree that like some of the ballads and
stuff like that, they're a little bit pop rock ballad
from the twenty tens, like washy, washy sort of stuff.
I don't find them terrible. I don't find anything here
as bad as like the stuff they were doing on
one more like with that. But for me, there was
just like the sort of body of this album that
is like the main kind of like these are big
Lincoln Park songs. I actually really like, really like them.
Speaker 1: The Emptiness Machine is the standard of Park song that
I genuinely never expected to hear again. Like I think
that song is the most classic Lincoln Park song since
Minutes to Midnight. It is a question of expectation for
an album after that in terms of like prior to
that single coming out, I didn't anticipate anything of that
like Upper Upper Ceiling Linkin Park quality coming out again
because I didn't have any reason to. I think, just
for comeback singles, that is one of the best that
we have seen in the modern near Yeah.
Speaker 2: This is like the thing the Linker Park sound, even
though they've not been active since like twenty twenty eighteen,
We've not been lacking for the Lincoln Park sound. Every
fucking medical band, sure every time I had been doing it,
and I was, and I've got sick of it even
like or I've got sick of hearing it being done
in that way. Saving Linko Park can actually do it
and come back and do it in a way that
sound that reminded me of like what Lincoln Park. The
Sortling Park sound can be like when it's done to
high quality. I think the Antis Machine nails that it
is big. It's polished like without sounding like completely synthetic,
like the guitars to actually sound like guitars when they
used and not a computer program.
Speaker 3: The chorus actually like is big.
Speaker 2: I think Emily, I think on this like she was
a really good showcase for a first single for her,
like kind of showing her arrange which you can kind
of do, like the clean bits she can nail the
bits I'm meant to be more raw and intense. I
think it kind of showed that her and Mike actually
do have quite a bit of chemistry playing off each other.
I think it's got like the bridge that the whole
I only want to be passing builds nicely to that
last court sounding as big as possible.
Speaker 3: Again, it's just really clean and big sounding, and it just.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, yeah, no, what I want from
the c uck So it did kind of like set
me on the right foot for the album before everything
else happened. But it like the thing for was in
can they deliver this standard across a whole album? And
they There are moments that I do think come close
to matching up to this, and maybe on the odd
song do match up to it. But I do agree
this is probably going to be the song that will
endure longer then most of us this album.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's testament that song is so good
that it survived in all of our heads after within
hours being used by the Emily Armstrong Scientology Danny Masterson Debarkle.
All while that story was unfolding that week, I still
just had that chorus whirling around in my head, like
it's unbelievably big pop metal songwriting and it's not fucking
deep right, Like the lyrics are shallow, they're basic. My
horizons aren't expanded by hearing those words.
Speaker 2: But Linker Park have always been like that. Yeah, I
can't like bash this Lincoln Park album for being lyrically
a bit, so.
Speaker 4: I'm not I'm just saying.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that on that song, you know it
doesn't do that, but Emily crushes that particular chorus, Like
I really think that that moment of her switching into
that kind of register as that chorus hits, it's her
at her best on this album, like it's goosebumps, and
I think, you know again that they still have that
secondary All I want is to be part of something.
Counter melody hook in Reserve, it's brilliant, best linkin part
song in more than fifteen years. Job done, and it's
what makes the rest of this alb a bit confusing
because on one hand, as said, I'm chuffed with that
track because I didn't think they still had it in them,
and maybe just one of those is more than I
could have hoped for. On the other hand, when they
show that they do have it in them to produce that,
I start to look at the album tracks here and go, well,
what the fuck are we fapping around with here? Then
second single, Heavy as the Crown, I think is good.
It's not emptiness machine good, but it similarly taps into
like a very classic Lincoln Park sensibility epic but also
kind of bouncy. It has the second best Emily armthrong
hook on the album, hence the reason it would probably
pick to be the second single, second single.
Speaker 4: I'll take that. I think Heavy as the Crown is great.
Speaker 2: It's a kind of like blend of again a bit
of meteor with bism It's got the first kind of like, oh,
we're going to try and directly call back to a
Lincoln Park moment sort of on this record, with that
scream over the breakdown being pure given up, kind of
like going back to that sort of thing of Emily
letting out this like big, drawn out kind of like
pain scream over breakdown. But I mean again, it's got
a really good chorus something like the sim folks got
a nice kind of catchy like thing going on to it.
The guitar's pop, nicey loads of bounce, and again like
these are again this is that sort of material.
Speaker 3: I want it.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's not what is the end to this machine buying?
It is up on that level. This is how this
pop metal thing that every band is trying to do
is how you should be doing it. It's actually like
when it's done well, it can be really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But my first list of this album was honestly
like an almost directly on off thing with the first
run of songs where you know where they would do it.
For me, I was almost placing bets as to whether
the next orb would follow the pattern or not. And
I am I'm quite really quite surprised to hear that
you are feeling like you like a lot more of
this album than you don't, I suppose, because for me,
the disparate I'm feeling quite damning about it as an
overall album because the disparity between the best couple of
songs and the rest of it, I think is startling.
Speaker 2: I think again, the destrict between the best and the
worst of it, Yeah, fair enough, there is there is
that kind of gaffing quality, but I think there's just
it's how many songs do I consider to be bad?
I would say one, two, a push four songs I'm
not particularly into on this record, which again on a
ten track ignoring the little intro bit. Okay, it probably
is half day, but I think only maybe two of
them are really bad and the other two I just
kind of like a bit forgettable.
Speaker 3: But the other six songs I really like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm more like three of these are good. Two
of them were the big singles we already heard beforehand,
and most of this album is almost low effort in
how I feel about it, I think Cut the Bridge
sandwich between those two singles at the beginning album, I
have rarely felt the excitement and momentum from an unreal
opener dissipate more quickly because the emptiness machine. I'm fucking
there right like with all of my emotional reservations I
have about the gear part. Now, I'm still there with
that song. My chest is puffed out, I'm ready to
go and take on whatever's next. And Cut the Bridge
is just an absolute deflating balloon of a song.
Speaker 2: After that, mind cut the Bridge, I think like, yeah,
Mike's rapping is Mike's rapping. There's don'thing like I can
kind of just endure about that, Like it's a sound
that again I'm finding you that it's not great.
Speaker 3: I think the chorus has again the stuck with me?
Speaker 1: Has it stuck with you because it's just bleed it
out again? Has it stuck with you because it is
the most wanna be bleed out energy? The super regimented
clickie drums. The himbo, if he wasn't also potentially malevolent
dumb Shanoda wrapping and bleed out was already pushing how
clinical they could take that particular feel. But it had
a megahook. This one is so empty. It's got no
lift or magic to it at all.
Speaker 4: I see where you're coming from.
Speaker 2: I still kind of think when when you get to
cut the bridge or on bit that does come up with,
it's going for a different like kind of like I'm
doing with the whole ragiment thing, but it's still kind
of like classical melody symphonic thing playing around in the
angsty pop metalfing that is like that makes it slightly
different so thin.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe you're saying that. I can't believe they
didn't decide to had anything extra to that song, Like
it rides the same shitty chorus with no source on
it at all in the studio, and I was saying,
I was like, this is like one layer of orchestrations
or something. Put more on it, because it's like, I agree,
they could go bigger with it. It's so empty and
it's and it's not the only instance where they directly
lift one of their own classic songs for lesser rewards.
I mean heavy as the Crown is already jacking faint
to a large degree.
Speaker 2: Faint.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at least that one has the kind of
presence to work it a bit. And I did, like
when Bringing the Horizon did it on Thrones. I'm not
going to be grouge linking part doing it themselves. Two faced,
I can draw a fucking liner.
Speaker 2: It's two laces. When I'm like, I can recognize that
two face is shameless in like be like, do you
remember hybrid theory?
Speaker 3: Do you remember once they're closed?
Speaker 2: If I'm like, here's the thing, I do remember both
those I like both those things.
Speaker 3: The is bouncy and it's fun.
Speaker 2: The only time where two phase loses me is when
you get to twenty twenty four millennial anxiety version of
two thousand and one, like teenage angst with I can't
hear myself think stop yelling at me. Yeah, kind of
like like I say, twenty twenty four MILLENNIU anxiety version
of shut up when I'm talking to you. It's a
little bit. I was like, okay, you can, you can
maybe bin that bit off. But i'd like the rest
of that song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the riff. I think the chorus is decent.
I think if it was only if I was judging
the first minute of that song, I would say, it's
just it's like an evocation of what the feeling of
one step closer is, and I would accept that totally.
But you know the bit in Alien Romulus when he
goes get away from her, you bitch, and you go
bark off.
Speaker 3: But they follow up with DJ scratches, So no, I
forgive this.
Speaker 4: It's shocking.
Speaker 1: I did a laugh of disbelief when I almost note
for note, do shut up when I'm talking to you again.
You can't hear it and not notice how shameless it is,
even where the way it's like, what's what's another way
we can say?
Speaker 4: Shut up? Guys?
Speaker 1: How about stop yelling at me? It has that exact
same feeling of when a movie Regurga takes a line
from an earlier classic and you gough because that hasn't
earned it. In the same way, it's just I can't
in good conscious say that is good. I find it
laughably brazen, and again it made me laugh. It's so empty.
But at least that is one of the livelier songs
on the record. When this record is not lively, I
think it is just like wet wet wallpaper because over
each other I hadn't heard as a single the way
I had heard empt this Machine and heavy as the Crown.
I was amazed to, you know, look at it and
realize it was the third single, because I guess it's
them trying to show some dexterity and mix up with
like a softer single after two rockers. But it is
just like an old pop song with Emily's meekest vocal
on it. And this is the thing I have about
some of these songs. It takes so long to do anything,
and the songs themselves aren't long, right, So why are
you taking up more than half of the runtime of
like a three minutes song to give it any presence
in the mix? Again, like the hook isn't there even
when it builds in the kind of percussive elements and stuff.
This album at its worst can feel like you've been
given the Lincoln Park equivalent of like dehydrated, shrunk down
astronaut food, you know what I mean. It's like you
can recognize what the food is, but it is such
a meek, meek, meager helping.
Speaker 3: Over each other's one.
Speaker 2: We're kind of go like the chorus is fine, like
Emily is trying to still be somewhat relatable as a vocalist.
I know, like cow relable can she be as a vocalist? Fine,
but I do agree like the ballads are the worst
moments on this record where they just again because even
when the Capark has done ballads in the past, they
had like stuff going on around it. You had like
Chester giving it everything on the on the vocal department.
This is where I'm gonna go. Well, I said, like
they're touching on the one more like kind of thing,
and I think it just I don't want to say
it's like terrible. It's just this is where like at
as worse to me is just a bit flavorless and forgettable,
like on songs like this or Overflow, I'm like, okay,
like it's it's it's background noise. I don't find them
to be like offensively bad or like making me no.
Speaker 1: It's more how much of this record I think is
underwritten in that way. I'm not saying I don't think
anything on this record is like apps, apart from maybe
you know, the breakdown in Two Faced. Anything on this
record made me like recoil in disbelief at it. But
it's how utterly boring and forgettable.
Speaker 4: A lot of it is.
Speaker 1: Casualty is the one album track that I'm down with
because it is when you go, oh the Hunting Party, Well, yeah,
it's Lincoln Park. I didn't nobody getting little Bit Angry today.
I liked it when they did it with War on
the Hunting Party. I'll take it again here.
Speaker 2: It's that kind of raucous, slightly punky song that they
they have on hand.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is really cool. The riff is dumb.
Speaker 1: I like that about it, just really like choppy, smash
your head about angry. Mic rapping is so funny, Like
it's just it's great music to throw your toys around
in your ten year old bedroom, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: That's that's the thing.
Speaker 2: Is Like again, I could be so cool about Mike's raphing,
but it is just a sound that I'm kind of
just like, ah, sad. Remember you think Macinoa was a
good rapper, Yeah, you know, misguided teenage sad.
Speaker 1: It's sort of endearing there again. That that's I think
that is the best this album has passed the two
big singles going into the second half. Past that, it
is dry. Fucking Mike's introduction speaking of him to the
verse on Overflow is terrible.
Speaker 2: And once again going that's probably the worst song on
the album for me, like, yeah, but that's another one
where it's like you're in the fucking back end of
the track before it feels like it's gotten past the intro.
It's like a that's almost like again a weird thousand
Sun style experiment of a track. Yeah, but where it's
almost like they haven't decided what they're actually experimenting and
aiming for. It's just like, yeah, it would throw something around.
And then there is just a series of songs after
two Face that I will never remember because they're underwritten.
I think Stained sucks the wind out of its chorus
by dragging the preamble ramp up again and doing that
awkward thing I thought we'd all moved past five years
ago of making your choruses the point where the beat
drops out rather than like coming in the closer. I
think is pretty poor and unpleasant to listen to. And
it does feature Mike rhyming stairs with stairs, which is
this is the thing about this, for how much of
this album is announcing itself as like a huge new era.
It's the first linkin Park album in seven years. It's
the result of careful consideration, working out the new relationship
in the band and so on. But bar the standard
two singles that they need to make an impact and
bag those league of legend promotions, it's underwritten and low
effort to me. In the studio and the gulf between
the fullness of a push to radio song like the
Emptians Machine and the album tracks that are just there
out of some obligation to have an album is so
clear to me. I mean, I still think you know
I gave you everything I had towards the end, that
that kind of has something of casual and just being
a bit of a dumb fine raged. I think that
song's pretty good as well. Again, I think all of
the heavier cuts on this album, they're not like I
wouldn't call them classical till but I would still say
there's more I can remember on this. I've revisited The
Hunting Party quite recently. There's still more of the songs
on this that I actually remember.
Speaker 3: Beyond that. Again, three or four tracks of.
Speaker 1: The Hunting I would say the Hunting Party actually has
more good songs on it. I think it also by
the side of it, that is, it has more songs
in general, it's longer, so proportionally it might work out
about the same. That might be the case, but like
I said, I think there is For me, there's three
decent songs on this and seven one of which is
almost like a link in part parody, and then six
that are the most forgettable songs.
Speaker 2: Because I mean, the thing is sad because obviously it's
so brief, it's so hyper focused that I think if
some of these songs were more drawn out, were longer,
would kind of more time wasted. I would be a
bit more kind of like, okay, that that's actively de
tracked from the album now. But it's so kind of
like just onto the next thing quickly that I never
found myself getting two like fed up of the worst
songs on here, though I agree they are they are
quite empty and kind of just like bare Bones For me,
I do kind of think this album almost exists as
a kind of like, Okay, let's see if this new
linep has chemistry, and I think to an extent, I
do think Mike and Emily clearly have chemistry together, but
I could do about the the little studio snippets of
them laughing and playing around together.
Speaker 3: That that I'm like, I was like, okay, fine, you know.
Speaker 1: I think from any other band I would take that.
But because everything about Lincoln Park feels so kind of corporate,
I feel like they're trying to sell me on something
by putting those bits in there.
Speaker 3: I think it's almost like trying to humanize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you say hyper focused. I understand
what you mean is the album is short, but I
don't know what they're focused on is the problem. It's
hyper focus.
Speaker 3: Like focus on just delivering what that song is offering
at that.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if that's true, because, as we said,
there's songs that are just like rambling out into the
ether and don't actually seem to have like a central
drive or propulsion to what they're doing. That weird Light
thousand Sun style, just like faffing about stuff is not
to me what I would call focused. I think they
were focused on delivering a couple of guaranteed hits and
then filled in the blanks, and I think what I
am left with being abundantly clear on this is that
this album feels like an advert for the Link in
Part tour.
Speaker 3: As what I was that was my conclude, that was
what I was going to get onto.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Lincoln Parker back there sounding sort of like
you remember them, even though they have a new singer,
So you can trust from that she'll be able to
sing the old songs well. And here is a couple
more really good ones to throw into that mix. You
don't need to know about the rest of it.
Speaker 2: And that's what I was gonna say, Do they have
the chemistry together and be it is an advert for
the global mega stadium tour that's going to make them
even more millionaires than they've ever been because of the
cost of live music now, and like that that's kind
of what it is. Will I take that one that's
got like a good amount of songs, I do genuinely like,
yeah again, I can reck that. Like again, Like this
isn't an album that I'm going to go back to
as an album in full the same way I go
back to Eaving up to a thousand Suns. But I
will still have a handful of songs in this. I'm
excited to see live and so like, yeah, I mean
that job done there.
Speaker 1: An album being an advert for the tour, like I said,
I don't think is inherently shameful because most albums by
legacy bands end up being the tour adverts, right, that's
what the industry has become.
Speaker 4: But the way this.
Speaker 1: Album has been like manufactured as an event to be
everywhere when it is as a work unto itself pretty scant.
I think it's a better piece of brand management than
it is a piece of music and judgment on those terms,
it does have Like I said, you know, it's my
favorite single Lincoln Park Moment since I was essentially a child,
or like the best songs on it, and this certainly
doesn't make it any like a new low, like you know,
any worse than anything they've done since their prime era
that we didn't know would be getting that at all
to a couple of months ago, you know, so big
check there. But does this album stand up on its
own or live up to that kind of overall promise
of like that lead single. I think the answer is
a clear fat no.
Speaker 2: I mean that's not again if we're talking about like
this said, does he live up to the leads all. Yeah, No,
as a whole it doesn't. But I would still again
say this is the most enjoyable for me Linker Park
have been in a long while, and that for me
was kind of all I could hope for. I guess
from a com up, I didn't expect a classic album
from Linker Park at this stage, so if it's the
most I've enjoyed them of theirs, I'm gonna take that
as a win.
Speaker 1: We also had can you Believe It? A new album
from The Cure at the beginning of this month, Songs
of a Lost World. This is a new one. I've
never had a Cure album to review before, you know,
I've had many things that sounded like the Cure, but
never one from the top dogs themselves.
Speaker 4: The first Cure.
Speaker 1: Album since four thirteen Dream in two thousand and eight.
That was long before I really became a Cure fan.
I was like twelve in two thousand and eight, so
I'm I'm sure I had some forlorn misery in there somewhere,
but I think you can forgive me not having found
it yet in the Cure at that stage in my life.
It was about the mid twenty tens when I as
like almost every goth leaning extreme metal head eventually does
became fanatical about the Cure. And that was a time
and a landscape where everything about the Cure, apart from
the possibility of seeing them live, was in the past, tense,
like all the music was in the past. No one
was really like checking their calendars every month waiting for
the new Kere album to turn up. Robert Smith said,
there was a new Cure album coming, but the years
went on and on and simply you just had other
things to be doing, right, Yeah, that you had other
things to be checking out, and if there ever was
a Ukere album, it will turn up when it turns out.
This is how I was envisioning it, And now it
has and I'm still in the very novel stages of
that being true and that status quo having changed from
one thing into another.
Speaker 2: I mean generally, so I've probably got into the Cure
slightly later. It was would have been sort of like
the late twenty tens. I said, like twenty seventeen eighteen
around then that I kind of I don't I know,
not the Cure prages, but I'd never like like I
I remember hearing like Friday, I'm in love during the
sort of like period, I was an idiot who listened
to any metal Corn was like that stupid band again, idiot, Like,
I can accept what you're.
Speaker 4: Reading a lead story you like didn't see them or
something because you didn't.
Speaker 2: I went I didn't see them because in fairness, I
was like at the time reading twenty twelve, I would
have rather have gone to see Social Distortion over the Cure,
like story of My Life is a banger. I just
had no I had no interest in the Cure in
twenty twelve, like because.
Speaker 3: Where I was, I would have seen them, and I
wouldn't have enjoyed them.
Speaker 2: It would have probably only disliked the Cure even more
because I think at that time particular, you weren't a
fan of the Cure.
Speaker 3: Everyone said they were like the most boring thing ever.
Speaker 2: And if you were a fan of the Cure, everyone
but like they're perfect, flawless, incredible live. I probably would
have put me off them even more if I'd gone
to see them. I in hinds, I do regret my
decision because I've not had I've missed out in them
every time they've been around since.
Speaker 3: But eventually, when I kind of.
Speaker 2: Discovered the like darker gofier Cure material that I think
is some of.
Speaker 4: The best music ever written.
Speaker 2: It all it all clicked in place and like, so again,
this is the first new Cure album in my time
of being a fan. Obviously, I went back and listened
to the last couple of Cure albums.
Speaker 1: Yeah, remind us where you're at in terms of relationship
with their catalog, Like, what's your favorite couple records? And
at how many of them? Like have you heard? So?
Speaker 2: Pornography I think is the best Cure album. It's that
and Disintegration are the best too. I don't really think
there's a conversation outside of those two. I think they
are just absolute master struct I know some people if
they prefer the kind of more new wavy sort of
poppy stuff the Cure, they.
Speaker 1: Might I mean, I would throw kiss Me Kissed Me
in as like into the similar sort of terrain of
like quality, but are obviously like the most classic ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I think, like in terms of just
like the art on offer, that those darker Golf albums
are the best. I do actually recently go back and
check out the two thousand stuff they hadn't listened to,
and I recognize those albums are flawed, but the first two,
in particular the self titled and.
Speaker 4: I really liked.
Speaker 2: For all their flaws, they have a question of recisions
made on them that kind of like I could see
why some people might not get them Blood Flowers again
because of my lineage of loving the dark material. I
really like that. It's a lot more indulgent and drawn
out at point, but I can realize it. But I
think there's there's cool stuff on those records. But I
could also understand if they were the like if that
was like the last one of Cure records and they
left off on the what's the two thousand ones, one
of the least for me. Yeah, Like, if they'd left
off there, I can understand what some might think. They'd
never kind of had a classic closing statement, and it
would have felt like a weird place for them creatively
to leave it. So I can understand why, despite it
being such a drawn up process, everyone's always kind of
hoping this mythical new Cure album would eventually materialize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you know, like I said, everything about the
Cure's catalog was in the past tense when I got
into them. You naturally you have a slightly different relationship
to the records. Disintegration is my favorite. It's one of
the best albums ever. Pornography, Head on the Door, kiss Me,
Kiss and Kiss Me also some of the best albums going.
I have my own favorites. Also going deeper into the
back catalog, I really love like seventeen Seconds and stuff
like that. But record like four thirteen Dream or the
self titled I I never got the experience of having
that land on my lap and then having to like
compare them against the classics, you know what I mean.
It's like I could come to them and appreciate them
in my own time. And this is the first album
a Cure album has landed in my lap, and I've
had to think about, like does this live up to
my impression of the Cure or not? I think, happily
for me, it really does. And taking those standards of
like how Cure at the very best, you know, have
been mixing them, then with again the knowledge and the
stands of their latter day work and the more sort
of gradual level of appreciation we'll get with those. I
think if you calculate almost like the roughly how good
from that a cure, you know, album in twenty twenty
four without an album for sixteen years should be This
album almost hits exactly and then maybe slightly exceeds what
we have been imagining.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think again I've said this the first
qu album I've had to kind of judges at a
new piece part. But when we talk about legacy albums
that there's kind of like a limited of put on
a legacy album because there's always expectation that bands after
song aren't going to be delivering their classic material.
Speaker 3: I think this has a shout of being one of.
Speaker 2: The greatest sort of legacy albums from a band like
well past their prime year like decade, over a decade
after the last record they've come out. And again I'm
not gonna say this is one of the greatest cure
albums ever. It's not on POG level, but it's still
I think it would be in that top tier of
cure albums. For me, I think this album is like
absolutely stunning. I've not been able to get enough of
this for the last month or so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think like four thirteen Dream where they left
off last time, is a good album, and I think
that almost would have been for the late career, like
kind of where you'd expect them to be. This album
is way better than that album. Ye, significantly better than
that album, which I still like. I guess you know,
which version of the Cure are you getting? Is a
thing to establish, because over their career they have done
many different things, and some of those are more surprising
and unpredictable than others. This album I think fits the
lasting vision that most people have of the Cure, which
is the lasting specter of albums like Disintegration, where they
lean into their dreamy but heartbreaking kind of long form,
languid register the Latter Day example, to Parilous, to just
the so people aren't only comparing it to Disintegration. Blood
Flowers from two thousand also took on that kind of approach.
I guess you could argue that maybe bits of Wish
did as well, mixed in with more kind of direct
pop songs, but that sound for me, you know, it
makes this really reassuringly familiar, because I love different versions
of the Cure, and it would be fucking crazy if
they turned up with like whatever their twenty twenty four
version of Like the Top or Japanese Whispers would be.
Speaker 4: But when you are.
Speaker 1: Pressing play on the first Cure ALB in sixteen years,
what I really wanted was to sync into something equal
parts kind of drab and majestic me and like like,
I want to be emotionally cared for by the Cure.
And this album came out on Damnation weekend and on
my way back from the festival, something had disagreed with
me and I was sick in a bush outside a
train station and then I put this album on my
way home with my dicky tummy and it cared for me.
Speaker 4: That's all I want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I agree. I think when I hit play,
you want you want to be immersed in a in
sort of a drab, kind of like downcast world, but
one that is emotionally stirring. And I mean that's the
important thing is does a Cure album emotionally make can't
some kind of an impact on you? Because again like
that that emotion can be anything with the Cure that
they have some like really like quite joyful music. They
have some of the saddest, darkest, miserable music. And as
long as it stirs that emotion in you, I think
a Cure album is doing something right and this for me,
this is emotionally stirring music. I again, I've said so
many times I listen to music on an emotional level.
It does it make an emotional connection, and this album
does that so frequently in different ways. But it is,
like it was on the notes to be like, this
is an album about the end, the feeling of finality,
like the end in all its different ways, and what
the ends can mean. It's all over this record. It
is the kind of driving emotional theme and it's really
effectively delivered on every song.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, like this particular side of the Cures discography, sonically,
you can almost go like, is it a good album
to have a cry to? And I think you can
have a top top cry to this.
Speaker 2: Definitely songs here that would like if I was on
a particularly mostly vulnerable day, could get a tear from me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think you know Alone as the opening track, which
we also had as the single, it does have that again,
that kind of interesting mixing and mastering job that has
a weird sort of metallic pinging tiddiness to it, which
I'm sympathetic to someone being like, that's kind of a
bit antithetical to what I imagine in like lush Cure, but
I've bizarrely become attuned to it. It's almost like the
album is wearing steel capped boots or something, and I
like when it starts kicking, but anyway, those layers of
keys and strings or just kind of moving over you
in this genuinely like wave like motion, you know, kind
of sinking back and forth like on a shoreline. When
those pianos start to come in around the minute mark,
no matter like how you know, harsh or tiny the
production might be, that's when I start to feel like
only The Cure could do it like this, right, That's
the feeling that we've been missing for sixteen years arguably longer.
It's the feeling that, you know, some of these tracks,
some of the best tracks on this are like over
half the run time, it seems Intro Road and Lincoln Park.
That's how you do it, right, That's how you feel.
Speaker 2: Thing is how many times have I winged about a
drawn out interron? Like I didn't care a single time
on this because yeah, so it's so nice and there's
a constant kind of drip feed of just expanding that
intro a little bit more of each time it loops around,
adding in a key or a simp or even a
guitar sound, and they just constantly wash over you and
it just makes the whole out. It makes you feel
like something more and something so vast, and again it
just takes you in the emotional journey that builds. So
when Roberson's vocals do first come in on a loan,
it's this really like heartbreaking yearnic Gothic melody that again
Smith like in his age, he's not the vocalists he
may have once been, but there is.
Speaker 4: I think he sounds fantastic on this, but there is, As.
Speaker 2: I say, there is a tone to his voice that
is so undeniably him, and he knows how to hit
a melody that will grab your emotion and kind of
like put you on his wavelength immediately. And I think
it's it's a really like wonderful vocal performance that like
kind of plays with his limitations in like ways that
make it more impactful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think Robert's voice is just one
of those voices that is such a extremely pure externalization
of himself. I think it's one of those voices that is,
you know, if you were to bring in the consideration
of like how would age affect a person's voice and
make them, I don't know, like lower their range.
Speaker 4: In their singer anything like that.
Speaker 1: I think he's one of the voices who is least
affected by the because his voice is just some kind
of a pure representation of himself in that way, and
there's something about him like, you know, like on Disintegration,
he was famously twenty nine because he was panicking about
turning thirty and making this album, and it's full of
feelings that feel like twenty nine is way too young
to be really dealing with that in the way that
it does. That kind of means that, you know, Robert
Smith now, you know he's over sixty.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I get no sense from this of like, oh, I
can't believe Robert Smith is still sad and hasn't sorted
his life out or anything like that, because it's not
like a angsty, youthful moping. It's more like the kind of
spiritual isolation that he was always singing about still endures
into what they are now. And you know the refrain
on that first song of like you know, we were
always sure we'd stay the same, but it all stops
where did it go? It's just so elemental in an
emotional sense in the way that again to make the
comparison purely spiritually disintegration or pornography like kind of made
those albums what they were. And you know, through all
these years he's remained a really like, you know, a
cool authoritative in his you know, laying kind of voice
that you know has that factor to him when bands
have tapped him for features, you know, whether it be
Blink twenty two or Churches and Robert indulging the kind
of malaise that only feels increased by you know, whether
it be the new infrastructure of the world we live
in today and how we live our lives, or the
sense of mortality. I think it's the obviously Coparraisson point
for me is the last Depeche Mode album of mentor
Morey we spoke about, Yeah, where like its sense of
kind of aging, maturity and mortality only bleeds into the album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, because again, like the it's not like angst,
but there is there is there is a kind of
with the whole thing being about endings, there's kind of
mix of like melancholy bleakness looking to what comes after,
and it's a kind of like explores us in different ways,
but like alone, like there is there is right, there's
a stark loneliness of kind of like being some of
someone who is now a some point and seeing it
all happen and kind of having to accept it's going
to happen to him that this is the end of
every song we sing, where it go all that sort
of stuff. It's it's there's an acceptance of reaching this
point and it just fits so naturally into the sort
of gothic soundscapes that the best qure material works with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, like nothing is Forever with a
title like that, seemingly sonically it's just like it lets
the light shine in for just a bit with the
strings of pianos at the start.
Speaker 3: Which is that intro is stunning.
Speaker 1: It's so like reassuring to me, but it has that
sense of kind of you know, passing beauty and like
impermanence that like those are the sensations the grand you know,
sensations that the cure are sensational at there's a song
like I Can Never Say Goodbye towards the end where
you can see how like almost relatable to stuff like
post rock, they could be where they can build a
song on just swelling piano and bass loop and stuff
like that, and it just gets more and more like
beautiful and melancholic. And then there is Robert at the
center of it, which turns that you could almost imagine
an instrumental track of that just being like really evolving
but having him on there. And that's a song about
the passing of his brother, and it turns into this
really heavy meditation on death and and grieving, and it's
really like raw and just unignorable.
Speaker 2: I'm just so much of so little on those kind
of minimalist instrumental passages. But again, like there's got one
of the best choruses from smithrom this album that that
something wicked this way comes like it is like to
steal away my brother's life.
Speaker 4: It's heartbreaking. It is so upread.
Speaker 2: About like the cruelty of what death can be and
himn't trying to process that, and it just it adds
another layer of like emotional pain to what again like
are quite occasionally sparse songs, but in that sparse as
they're doing doing so much it feels gonna be like
a sort of contradiction, so that it's really evolving and
there's something's going on, but it's sparse and spacious, but
they just they play around with these soundscapes in ways
that does keep it so interesting where they can draw
things out and still find like again a vocal hook
or an instrumental piece bit piano guitar to just really
like searing those emotional beats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like I love a fragile thing, which
nails this really specific feel that the Cure do, which
I think is one of the hardest modes that they
operate in to recreate, which is that song like grooves
and rocks to.
Speaker 3: A degree tension.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it feels primarily built on like almost like
you can imagine like like TV soundtrack keys and stuff
and like percussive elements. So it is like a weird
like putting a piano riff atop like a hard grooving
rock drum per. Like it's an odd balance that's hard
to get as naturally as the Cure do it, I suppose, Yeah,
and the song resultingly, it feels like kind of heavy
and it feels like it means business, but it's also
never overbearing and it's never like heavy heavy, you know
what I mean. You can still have that like just
real soft touch beauty to it.
Speaker 2: I mean, my favorite run on this album is the
run of a Fragile Thing through to drone No drone
that sort of like periods of songs when you get
to that that run where it does it is the
heavy moment on the record where it does like I think,
like that fragile thing like SI, It's it kind of
just rides a bassline and some like last pianos. There's
not loads going on, but there's a mood and at
tension that they can just draw from that. Quite again,
minimum music that has a like really catchy chorus and
just kind of constantly moves forward. WARSNG is like a
slow moving dirge of a song that just kind of
marched along. The guitars just kind of wail all over
it and again in a way that is heavy without
being like crushing destorted guitars heavy. But the emotional weight
on it really plays is this like downcast morning of
a song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that the droning whatever that kind of
instrument is in terms of like the accordion or whatever
like organ drone, it is really creates a kind of
inherent tension in the air and peppering into that the
like you know, lots of sounds and yet kind of a.
Speaker 3: Really little catchy synthoic pepper in there at times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it sounds like I have a lot of
space between them in that kind of again very droney,
open air, but it's also oppressive somehow, like the weird
ghostly percussion you mentioned that kind of hint of like
proper like wave ling rock guitar that sounds cool as
hell and then bleeds into the next track. I think,
you know, obviously there's like that serves a bit of
a one to two. I guess that feel like they
kind of go together to me with with with war
Song and dro Nodron, which hits on this groove after War.
Speaker 3: Song, almost industrial stomper of a track.
Speaker 1: It's like the bassline, the distortion on the bass home
just growls like a panther all of a sudden, and
the again, the percussive backbone on the kit just like
thuds along on your head is like locked in with it.
And there's again there's a lot of cool stuff happening
around in the mix with it, like some kind of
glistening eighties synth, and it's got a really cool, like
snapping vocal delivery from Robert on the chorus. It's the
closest thing that they can do to like a banger, right,
but it also super snugly fits into this general vibe
of like oppressive malaise and drudgery. It's a really sick
way to like have a center point of an album
like this that is different to what the opening and
closing tracks are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like my favorite Cure song is Burn,
so like when they're hitting a similar kind of like
vibe to that on the album, but again within the
vibe that this particular album hits, I think it just
is it's such a winner when you get that that
down down down like like really oppressive, really bleak stark,
but it is catching, it's rocking, and it like say
that locked in just kind of four to four grew
that just kind of snaps along. I think it is
like such a like great moment to have in the
middle of this album, and again it's the only time
they really do on this Some said that run of
songs is like the darker sort of piece of it
where it's a bit bit edgier, but jo John is
like the one off where they actually kind of like
rock really hard with it. And I think there's a
really cool thing of the album again from the time
that has songs have a lot sim of the tricks.
They all have their own identity. Nothing feels like disposed
or throw away. It's it's really like well thought out
track list of just kind of taking what's gonna make
the most impact, what's gonna like be the right song
to the moment. And I think like it's just like
really all just well sequenced and it just makes the
album just an immersive and always interesting and engaging listen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think this is an album which
is focused right, Like, this album feels like it is
moving in one direction with a certain.
Speaker 4: Aim of a mood.
Speaker 1: It feels more album than collection of songs in a
way that maybe some of the previous Late Cure albums
had been, like The Cell Out and four to thirteen
Dream are a bit more like grab your highlights, and
this is much more settle in for the whole experience
because it's going to really coherently hang you in that space,
and forty nine minutes is like quite short for them
as well. And then when you're looking for a way
to like end a Cure album like this, which is
so focused on that particular beauty, beautiful gothic melancholic kind
of space. I mean, like my favorite Cure song is
the title track on Disintegration. And when you get a
song like en song and song, yeah, you make it
ten minutes long, and you make the first six and
a half minutes of that just that intro, like we
were saying, but it's good, and you're relishing it and
you're not waiting for it to move on. You're just
gelling with how utterly sad and delicate. Those high notes
in the bassline are the building percussion, just like it
has this feeling of something that could almost just play
on loop forever, you know, just like pure instrumental beauty.
But fucking hell, I also need those to not be
the last words Robert Smith ether things on a Cure
album else that is bleak and crushing, just I'm old
everyone I loved is dead, left alone with nothing, nothing nothing.
Speaker 2: It is one of those like really stark and like
I almost get sad when Smith comes in on this
song because it's like, oh God, I have to deal
with that kind of like the end, because that instrumental
track to open. I keep forgetting it's ten minutes long.
I don't look at the time on it because it's
so it sounds incredible, so immersive, and when he does
come in and like again the bit with Smith coming
in vocal, it's a normal song, Lenk, it's like three
and a half minutes at that point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he sounds.
Speaker 2: Great, but it is just like he is just bleeding
his heart out at the loss of everything and kind
of just kind of like.
Speaker 3: Make peace with this is it?
Speaker 2: It's all gone, Like that's all he's saw of singing
like and again that left alone with nothing at the
end of every song was like, ah, fuck me, this
is league and like painful music that again like it
feels like this is gonna be the final state for
the cure, which.
Speaker 1: I don't actually, I don't think it's supposed to be.
I think he allegedly here. I know it might turn
say another several years, turn up whatever, but he has
that there is supposed to be more coming, which you know.
Speaker 3: I'd be happy with that.
Speaker 2: But I think this because obviously this is so much
dealing with that finality that that's that's a clear thought
that was like lingering in their head when they were
in the writing of this album because of again they
probably have seen friends and famis so many friends and
family come and go now and it colors everything they do,
so it is it is a and again a genuinely
sad melancholic but there are there again the most they
find beauty within it. I think going back to track two,
where it's kind of like being by a person's side
as they die and kind of like promise to be
of them and be what's after is like a really
beautiful sentiment, so like it can still find some light
within these really hard times. But yeah, as the sort
of definished of seOne of this album, end song is
about as crushing as it gets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm just I'm I'm trained to lean a
certain way with this, where every single synth line on
it and burgeoning bass part just has me getting all
kind of misty eyed and staring out into the rain
and pondering things and doing all the things a Cure
record stereotypically is meant to make you do. Yeah, they
just they have an ability as a band to touch
a you know, certain spot inside your being that other
bands don't quite reach. And just like unquestionably without thinking
with it. Really, I'm just going with that on this album,
and that's I think that's really the good thing about it.
There's no second guessing anything on this, you know, like
they've just turned up and they're the cure again and
the way that we feel about them hasn't changed. And
it's it's not a leap this album. It's not a revelation,
but it stirs up a whole load of emotions in me,
and I do think it is one of their more
emotionally unavoidable in that sense statement they have put out
in you know, several albums, and it's it's been a
real treat these past couple of years getting some of
these like late bursts of form from some of it. Again,
it's like goth great, so you'd kind of you'd forgive
these bands just trading on legacy forever. But like again,
you know, the the Depeche Mode album Mementa Maury, which
is an album that I genuinely love still and I
think that was their best album since the nineties. This one,
like a lot of the reviews I've read have jumped
to call it like the best albums in disintegration, because
that's the big quote you can put in the headlines.
That's a big call for me right now. But at
the very least I'd say it's the best. It's Wish,
and you know, it could well be. You know, I
think people proclaiming that on day one was a bit much.
Come on, but it could be. And Wish is a
fucking serious album, Like it has their biggest single on
it and some of their most beautiful songs on it
as well. And even like, you know, we mentioned Blood Flowers,
which I've I've always viewed as like cool, that's the
ceiling of Cure in the two thousands, Like that's the
late high water mark, and it's still really really good,
and I'm I'm thrilled and delighted to have something just
pushed through that like this.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely, Like I mean this am if you be
making a nice kind of like for like comparison to
Blood Flowers kind of be like what that album and
it's like, if it really lived up to its four
potential could be something like this. But yeah, I think
this is just like the first Cure album that's coming
out in my time being a fan, being an album
this good with something I was like, I was very
very happy to hear despite how like I say, like
stare out the window feeling sad.
Speaker 3: This album will make you be.
Speaker 2: But it is just a great kind of example of
what a band like, what a special what a truth
special bond the car that they can come back this
late in their career after so long and kind of
go like nothing's no, we've not missed a step.
Speaker 4: Here you go.
Speaker 2: Here is like an album that should probably be considered
a classic in their catalog full of classics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean maybe at this rate. The Sisters of
Mercy who released that album of all the songs they've
written and played lights in the nineties.
Speaker 4: You never know.
Speaker 1: There you go the cure. What a what a wonderful
thing to have that album dropped in our laps. At last,
we move on to the review I've been kind of
most looking forward to in this episode. I think Opeth
the Last Will and Testament.
Speaker 4: Here we go.
Speaker 1: Everybody, get your your cheeseboards and your vintage wine at
the ready, because the new Opeth album is the follow
up to twenty nineteen's in cowder Veninum, which is five
whole years. For the first time in my memory, it
feels like we've had to wait for New Opeth for
a bit more so, maybe personally because of the fact
that I really loved.
Speaker 4: In Kowd of Vanenem. I was really huge one it
at the time.
Speaker 1: And when we got our first tastes from this album,
it was something other than we had come to expect,
I suppose because very neatly, of course, in terms of
where it began and how it ended up sort of transitioning.
The twenty tens for Opeth were the decade where they
departed from the realm of extreme metal and fully embraced
the corduroy attire of a progressive rock band. And again,
you know, we were talking about that some of their
work in the last decade just last week on the special.
But there is a camp of folks for whom people
you know, for whom Opeth ditching the death metal just
sapped all their interest in them. And then there is
a camp of people who you know, stayed interesting and
continue to look forward to their albums. I personally, I
always liked the twenty tens Opath albums, but I really
had the realization when the last one in Cowdevenem come
out that that's a very strange, seedy eccentric but in
a twisted, poisonous kind of way album, which is that
it's not really the metal that made classic Opeth, it's
the atmosphere. It's you know, I've I've mentioned that, you know,
it's My favorites of the twenty tens records are that
one in Pale Communion, and they both have this kind
of like unsettling darkness lying right beneath a like trim
well groomed surface.
Speaker 4: Kind of quality.
Speaker 1: But to me, tonally is what links them to the
likes of Ghost Reveries and Watershed, even if you know
Michael never goes gour on them. So I didn't expect
that we would get a return to tradition Opeth album,
nor was I necessarily pining for one, But the release
of the first track from the Last Will and Testament
undeniably made me kick my legs like a little girl
with glee because the rush of like, oh my god,
that it felt like my circle collectively had when like
a thunderous, demonic Opeth track turns up. Because they're a band,
I are one of the most foundational for an entire
generation of a certain stripe of metal fan, Like if
you were getting into extreme metal at any point between
like the end of the nineties and the end of
the two thousands. Peak Opeth albums probably mean a tremendous
amount to you. The last Opeth album with any particular
connection to metal was Watershed in two thousand and eight.
I remind you, thrown back to a RelA conversation, I
was twelve in two thousand and eight. I got into
Opeth a couple of years later. Two thousand and eight
was also the year that the last Bloodbath album with
Michael on it came out. So unbelievably considering that this
is a band I feel like I've loved almost for
the whole time I've been into metal, this is the
first time I have heard a new album with Michael
like about growling on it, and so, having already been
enjoying recent Opeth albums, injecting that metal element back into it,
you know, from the days I really love the most,
did feel like kind of coming home to some degree.
And this thing is what is ridiculous about this album.
I got said this album a fair while ago because
the initial release date got pushed back as well, and
you're going there with that mindset of oh cool, new Opeth.
The word is they've gone metal again. I feel like
Opeth have trolled us all spectacularly because it's not that
the metal album. The metal element isn't here, right, Oh,
they dictates us with a single or something and then
the rest is all prog ballads, like the metal is here,
but they have put it in their most hysterically prog
album at least since Heritage. I think you could maybe
make the case forever. I was like, Oh, Opeth, you scoundrels,
you fooled us. This album is so mentally prog that
I think it takes more listens than usual to actually
get to grips with for Opeth, rather than it being
the kind of immediately gratifying return to familiarity that maybe
the old heads were gearing themselves up for. The only
album that is as mustache twirling as this one is Heritage.
This is, like, I guess, just heavier, evil, demonic mustache
twirling Sam. Yes, Elliott has not been able to be
here with us on this album reviews, and I was really,
you know, I was. I was envisioning me and Elliott
could go all in on what are the things that
make this particular? Opeth Records special or different or whatever.
But it's a such a funny album to be the
first Opeth album that you talk about us kind of
with in any you know, particular capacity. Because it is heavier,
more metal Opeth than we have recently known, maybe we
would be inclined to like that more than like full
seventies Opeth, but equally oop there's organ solos everywhere. There's
Ian Anderson playing the flute. Sorry, everyone, all of.
Speaker 2: The hard work speed did you know for the flute
washers and an Opef come along and do this? No
so for me Opef Like I've never been the big jem.
I listened to like Ghost Reveries, Water Shared Black Pop
because I was in the early twenty times, because I
called their classic metal albums. And I do like those
albums because they are classic metal albums. I don't like
progo Ope, like purely progo pef. I've not really cared
for any of this sort of stuff. I've kind of
poo pooed them off a lot. I really tried to
make the effort to meet this album on its terms,
and there is stuff on this album that I'm.
Speaker 3: Not going to immediately be dismissive of. It's mental.
Speaker 4: It's so wild.
Speaker 1: I was laughing the first time I heard it was
like I can't believe they've fooled us in with like,
oh yeah, there's gonna be more. But Angel riffs again
and then it's just the wackiest hit.
Speaker 2: I think the first track is like genuinely pretty cool,
like it's it is quite heavy and intense. The first
two minutes in particular are really kind of at it.
The riffing is still kind of that like kind of
like prog riffing as opposed to metal riffing, but it
is when played against those vocals, there is a darkness
and intensity to do it, and then you get those
clean vocals and I was like, uh, there it is,
and it just goes like in weird directions with ghostly
sort of female vocals the whole like the last one
and Testament, but when ever pinned that towards, Yeah, that
goes pretty hard and then you get a minute of
classical sort music coming out the back of that is
like this film was like the most Opeth Opeth can be.
Speaker 1: They are I have the exact centers in my notes.
I don't think this is the best Opeth album, but
it is the most Open.
Speaker 2: Album, Like I've not listened to every Opeth album. I've
listened to those, Like why I was just like the
like classic three. I guess I don't know if they
are the classic three. There what I always told with
in the classics, they're the big ones.
Speaker 1: My my favorite one is not is one that you've
not actually mentioned, but you know it's still Life. Yeah
that's a conversation for another day, but yeah, no, that's what.
Speaker 2: I should probably listen to at some point, Like I'm
sure I probably would actually quite like that one. I
don't like any of the twenty ten's open albums. I
remember listening to Sources when it came out and being like,
oh god, when will it end? But like when Open,
I'm kind of bringing it all together. It does make
like for a kind of fascinating listen when there's so
much and it's not just prog mustache twelling, it's that
mixed with bits of death metal and bits of all
kinds of other stuff. Probably again, I think that this
is what is so many of the Queen melodies is
pure musical theater from and like people all kind of
it's going over Like you would not give a musical
a chance, but you're letting mister ope here, I think
do his like big cheesy musical theater lines.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Whatever, Well, I mean, let me let me remind you
that I am a power metal fan, so I'm not
entirely against I don't know over the top grand during vocals, ever,
I think he does draw on some different vocal reference
points that I will maybe bring in a little bit later.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just it was so funny not only getting this
but also then knowing, Oh, it's just me and Sam
reviewing this.
Speaker 4: How the fuck is this?
Speaker 3: Kellian dropped that mob earlier today.
Speaker 4: I was like, is this gonna go?
Speaker 1: Because I have a lot to say about this album,
but I was like, it's gonna be way too fucking
flutes and samba for for you. I I do think
this album is fantastic, and I think it's really exciting
as an Opath fan, not as some return to form,
because reality, I don't think they ever really lost that.
It's because it uses their whole history and the different
guysers of their band basically as like a foundational springboard
to then reach a new level of some kind of ambition.
Because again, as you've probably read this as a concept album,
tells a very elaborate, twisty story that won't get into
details of but it's the first time they've done that
since still Life and twenty five years later becoming you know,
all the more a prog band. They really use that
concept idea to like run wild sonically and cram as
many like bizarre details in as possible. It's like they've basically,
you know, you've asked which version of Opeth do they
want to be, and they've gone yes again.
Speaker 4: That's why you hear on this album.
Speaker 1: The first track, paragraph one, is one of my very
favorite Opeth tracks released in the fifteen years that I've
been a fan. Like that track, it does just feel
like all my Christmas has come at once because I think,
you know, we could tell that there would be some
sort of fusion of new and old there essentially because
it fucking crunches right like. It's the hardest riff since
the last time they played death metal. And when Michael comes.
Speaker 4: In with a drape tune in death Like, it.
Speaker 1: Might make a little bit of a week come out. It's
so good, but it it's also like weird and eccentric.
It has that scary, queasy synth oscillation on the riff,
which I love because it creates this like haunted house
quality that Opeth are really good at, whether they're playing
prog or death metal. That's like a through line they have.
And then it breaks in the middle of like the
haunted accordion section and Michael does that like slightly kookier,
warblier singing voice where I saw in an interview that
he said he's been really inspired by Scott Walker, so
he's trying to do that kind of thing. It's a
little bit more unsettling rather than his Like when Michael
would sing in the earlier days, it'd be almost purely
kind of pretty stuff in contrast to you know, the
death metal voice. But here he's like bringing out some
of that eccentricity again in the clean singing, and that
immediate to me is like in cowd of veneem Energy,
because that like weird upper class mansion of secrets and
horrors that I imagine the house on that album cover
being very much has a kinchip with this. It's just
this has also brought in the heavier metal elements again
and then run wild with the septual side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I like, I don't care for any
of the conception narrative, but I can see this album.
It kinds up the image of a very large English
manner on a hill somewhere in the countryside, cobwebs in
the corners, like kind of like it's it's kind of
like decaying and aging and they're trying to sort of
move on from that, and there's all kind of things
of legacy and heritage and it is again I don't
really care for it. It is evocative of that through the
sound of the album, through all the mental twists and
turns they take. So I can't begrudge them that in
that they have their vision, they are realizing it, and
if you're into that, I think, like you'll find this
album to be really kind of like rich in detail,
which I think is obviously what OPEF are aiming for
on this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Paragraph one I think to me the most immediate
crowd pleasing track on the album.
Speaker 2: And so funny that that's the immediate crowd pleaser because
it still has that mental bit in the middle like
it does, but a lot of the rest of the
alum where they had, like again the paragraphs for song
titles and the kind of the focus weaving them together
to borrow a term from Blood and caantation that you
sometimes feel more.
Speaker 1: Like tablets of something larger necessarily than like, you know,
try picking the singles from the rest of this, you
know what I mean. But paragraph two has this like
insane seventies of a riff, which is a riff that
I think only post twenty ten Opeth would come out with,
because again in the earlier days when they borrow from
prog Rocket, it'd be more like the sort of candle
lit tasteful stuff. And then they just went fuck it
and started rocking for the dads. And that's what I
hear in that riff. But that song seems to have
about three four different songs than it only about five
minutes long, Like and over riffs like that, they've got
as much spoken word for me and Anderson and jeth
O atwel as a night Wish or a Thomas Screws
McDuck album, you know, reading out legal mesitations. So it's
a really like lock you in experience much more than
it's interested in being like a ripper, even though I
frequently think the riffs do rip, may even fuck as well,
But that's the kind of the vibe as an album.
Speaker 2: So you say, Ris, the opening rift of parag Are Freight,
that's really good, that rift goes.
Speaker 3: But this one thing I do not, particularly the second one.
Speaker 2: It's like, these songs do cover a lot of ground
in quite economical fashion. It's kind of surprised at how
like to the point they are despite the fact they
go all over the fucking shop. And I think that
that's quite impressive actually that they are. They are all
of these like you said that, there's that that weird
jaunty stratting riff with spoken word stuff, and then it's
like bizarre prog flourishes. There's bits of death metal throw
in there. You get a keyboard solo and like bin
that off if you ask me, But it doesn't come
for too long, that whole like reclaim your Soul bit
towards the end. So theater like Oprah fans would love
fans of the opera if you ask me, sure why not? Yeah,
Like but it is but again it's it's it's from
all these ideas, but it's not like they don't feel
kind of like randomly shoved in there. Everything it's kind
of given its room to breathe about overtaking too much time.
And this is what I'm saying that I'm trying to
meet this album on its terms. I really ad did
make it. Yeah, yeah, I mean this album what it wants.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely, and I think that, you know, again to mention,
I think it's to both bands amense credit. I guess
that I think the only death metal album you could
say this year that covers as much ground as well
as the Blood Countation album, right yeah, And that's the
fact that Opeth are.
Speaker 4: Still cramming in this much shit.
Speaker 1: The kind of and the keep up with that is
really impressive. I really like the way that the Growls
have made their way back into this album, because it
is on more of the album than you might expect,
I guess. But also, and I don't think you necessarily have
to like dive super into the concept. But I think
he the way he's deploying the vocals is largely in
the kind of conceptual role of like a certain voice,
the way it would be and like an Opua opera
or something, you know, because it is the like the
last will and Testament of Farther, as he says in
you know, the first track, So it has this feel
of like the real booming, looming patriarch figure on this
kind of throwing down those like demands upon the others.
He also does a very tom G warrior esk few
separate times in the album, which I liked every time
it happened. But paragraph three you mentioned is really great.
One of my favorite song on the album, Paragraph three.
I think that song is great. The way the riff
escalates in just like the first twenty seconds of its
playing is so out there and so like who the
fuck wrote this and put this series of like slippery
notes together. But it's also strangely sticky and I speak
with like the strings accenting them everything. It's a little
bit like a prog metal living is a problem because
everything dies the way it kind of.
Speaker 4: Like, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And the prog rock grooves again, I think Opeth have
been great at that for the last several years. The
bass lines and the way that the new drummer Valterie,
who uh he's the guy who played on the last
several Paradise Lost albums. He's now the new Opeth drummer,
and the way he's adapted to those kind of grooves.
He's superb on this and I didn't necessarily know that
he like from his stint in Paradise Loss, which is
more sort of straightforward, that he had this level of
like prog dexterity in him, but he gives a real
propulsion like the bass groove in paragraph four is full
on Italian goblin profondo rossovie going on with that, and
it's so slick and so much fun, and I think
it really this rewards the Opeth fan with a taste
for eccentricity, because I mean even the way like he
can introduce a growl part with a descending no no
no beforehand, right like this thing. It's not built on choruses,
even in the way that they're twenty ten's albums could
be built on choruses. This is much more like throwing
out odd ball grabbing while they're flying past hooks like
that before then moving into a fucking extended harp section
and then lo and behold the jeath throw tull movement.
Speaker 2: So the paragraph four is where this album did lose me.
I love it so much. It's so sick, like like
the harp solo was. Ah, they couldn't help themselves, could they?
Speaker 4: Like putting in a very lovely section. No, they couldn't.
Speaker 2: No, and then and then the flute solo, like oh,
I was like, god damn it, at least speed what
in the flute's over a breakdown?
Speaker 4: This is better, better than the speed one. I'm gonna
say it.
Speaker 2: There's more to this speed one. But you know, like
this rule so much.
Speaker 1: It's like my brain registers it as like I'm tailing
a suspect in an Italian Crane movie, you know what
I mean. It's almost like having like a full on,
you know, Ian Anson flute solo or is almost like
a long time coming prophecy fulfilled for Opeth.
Speaker 3: It feels like a moment like they've been building to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and my brain just registers that as being so
fucking cool, And like people who don't like Opeth will
obviously have the complete opposite reaction to that, But I'm
just grinning through that, like, yeah, give you all the
flute jams you got. It's so fucking sick.
Speaker 3: I mean, I said, I hate the flu solo.
Speaker 2: The guitar shower that follows though, that rocks, and there's
absolutely heavy riff to come after that. So like this
someone just like does capture like the two extremes of
my feelings for Opeth like it has it all and
again like again that that's that is what we say
with this album is just the most ope going back
to Perilfribas and like that's got those kind of like
slightly sympodic metal and kind of like Eastern flavors in there,
but they've done really tastefully like they're not done with
the most like bombast, but it feels a bit more
fit with what Opef are going for. They deploy it
in a way that's more kind of like not subdued,
but just tasteful within the sound of the record. And
I think every time they they even when they're doing
a fucking harp soon and flute solo, like for all
my like eye rolling I hate prog moments, they're quite
tastefully deployed.
Speaker 4: To Opef's credit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'll just tell you, if that flute
solo section, if that was in the score for like
All the Colors of the Dark.
Speaker 4: Or something, you would love it.
Speaker 2: You're right, You're probably right, so great, it's just within
this whole sound. It always just comes to me. I
was like, god fucking dammit, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm just so open to it, and in paragraph six
there's a trading guitar solo and since solo, and the
since solo is so fucking insane. I love it, absolute
horns up for that. But the thing like that, again,
part of the reason this stuffs worked so well for
Opeth is they set the stage for it to be
like darker and weirder and heavier with it because again,
like in counter Venem like that, this record has like
weird burts of like bright happy part with like hand claps,
and there's.
Speaker 2: Opening to paragraph six it's like big yeah, driving drum
beat and comings like aor guitars on it.
Speaker 1: There's there's one part where there's almost like a Michael
Aackefelt barbershop quartet that just delivers like one line of
like a grave mistake of sun and coold black, and
it just it just disarms you more. And like I said,
the grooves are so good in terms of like the
crazy beat in six, the kind of like Latin groove
he does in paragraph five, which you know, like walk out,
not loose, just that kind of Spanish guitar lick, and
he makes that drum part sound so natural and pleasurable.
And there is there's a rift in the middle of
that song that does, for the first time in a
long time talking about bringing the extreme metal in alongside
the progue as well the famous like extended breakdown section
of Deliverance that ends every Opath setlist, and it has this.
Speaker 4: Very particular rhythm to it.
Speaker 1: There's a rift in the middle of five that kind
of gives me some of that same like heavy rhythmic trickiness,
and that was like really exciting to hear that kind
of make its way into the context of everything else.
This is like, you know, it's a prog death metal
song with like a Middle Eastern passage and a Flamenco
edge and stuff and all of these like blink and
your miss it moments I mentioned before. And I think
it works and I can follow the flow of it,
and I feel like it has purpose, and I think
that is the seal that we can give to Opeth.
Like this album will so not be for everyone, even
amongst Opeth fans. It might end up being like too
kind of hardcore prog for some people. But you know,
if you don't like Opeth, this will probably send you
run in the other direction. Even though there are now
the metal parts now back into it. But fundamentally, I
don't think there are many bands who could operate at
the skill level required to make this whole thing play
out and work the way I think it does in
opes hands.
Speaker 2: Do you know again, someone who's so not to this,
I'm willing to agree. I think this is admirable, impre's
some I don't personally love it, Like I think it's
been a little bit shown up on the prog fund
by the Blood Incantation now, which I think is just
a like masterful, like untouchable creation. I think this is
still just a little like it doesn't have the exact
thrills that Blood in Connation does to really set the
prog kind of like flights of fancy. But I do
think there is like a very classy, stately sort of accomplished,
impressive musicianship to this. But it's not it's not It
doesn't completely push your way, even though it is a
consm bombardment of ideas and sounds like I may at
some point have to revisit some of those twenty tens
prog op albums and see has my assessment on them change,
because I do.
Speaker 3: I don't find this like boring or unlistenable.
Speaker 2: It's just it's just noting that I kind of love
but I'll ham on hands and with like you know, over
you've done something like impressive here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I love the way that the part
that paragraph seven ends on creates again almost like another
one of those grooves that feels like it would just
be the perfect kind of ride out into the ending
of the album type beat. But it's almost it's the
ending of that particular arc of the album becase it's
the last paragraph track. And then you have the epilogue track,
A Story Never Told.
Speaker 2: I was like, say that feels like kind of like
a very somber epilogue to sort of strip it back
at the.
Speaker 1: End, and it's beautiful and it's so like exquisitely delicate.
Where I guess something that maybe hasn't said that is
that Opeth are one of the best bands are ballad
that we actually have and it's so great that song,
And uh, I think it would be a misnomer, as
it always kind of is with these discussions seemingly to
imply that this is going back to like Blackwater Park
or Ghost Reveries or whatever style classic Opeth. I think
the approach is fundamentally different and all of the tricks
and the sounds that they've amassed over the last few years,
this thoroughly reads as latter day Opeth to me. But
you know those millennial Opath fans pining for the grouse
I mentioned, they do largely seem happy, So maybe grouse
is all you need to kind of have them swallow
whatever Zamy excursions Michael wants to take them on. Even
like the Travis Smith artwork just reads as like cozy
classic Opeth to me in a way that you know,
I love. But this is so much more than a
just return to metal Opeth album. Like, I think it's
not regressive at all. No, I think what is really
cool about this is I think it's ambitious beyond you know,
what you would expect of any band lesser than Opeth
on their fourteenth album, right, Like, this is genuinely something
they've not quite done before, and it's it's mad, right,
And I'm a huge Opeth fan and I heard this
and I thought, Wow, there's a lot of shit going
on here, and I'm going to be getting to grips
with it for a while, I think. But it just
it made me smile a lot this album, and I
think I'm really I'm fascinated about what that means, because
if this is I guess you could say this is
the dawn of like a new fourth stage of their discography,
maybe where kind of everything goes like it could be
a metal album, it could not be whatever they feel
like on the day. I think Opeth have always been
a great band fundamentally, but I think this certainly makes
them a more unpredictable one. And I think it's admirable
on the part of Michael as well that he kind
of recognized that with what they were doing with like
the purely clean style prog that I guess they hit
a ceiling with it, you know, because the kind of
accusations that we've been doing it for about a decade,
haven't they? So yeah, but you know, the accusation that
were always level like are you just progressive anymore? Like
are you still progressive if you are just doing you know,
shit from the seventies? I mean, but he kind of
gone like, yeah, I've done what I wanted to do
with that now. And I guess this song like this
shows that he's not adverse to reintegrating, you know, new
things or whatever, And I think that that level of ambition,
I think is really reassuring about this, And I think
it's the kind of thing that demonstrates what a special
band Opeth have been for a long long time. And
I guess what a good few weeks to be a
fan of nineteen seventies infused progressive death. Meal really haven't
seen anything quite like that in that regard tires something
more direct, I suppose. If that's not your back, our
next two albums kind of go together for obvious reasons.
We're going to talk about Better Lovers album Highly Irresponsible,
and then Many Eyes album The light Age.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: The Many Eyes album came out back in perhaps September,
I believe the Better Lover was at the very end
of last month. I thought it would be best just
for our own schedule, when particularly September and October are
so ridiculously busy with albums.
Speaker 3: Now now were loaded.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have like maximum eight review slots in one
of the I didn't really want to in two different reviews,
like bags of separately busy months take up two different
review slots for something that essentially boils down to if
you like every Time I Die, you'll probably like this one,
and you know, here at the very end of the year,
we have slightly more room to do that. I would
like to affirm that putting these next to each other
is in no way trying to pit them against each other,
which I'm sure if either artists heard this they would
not appreciate. There is no element of you having to
pick which one of these albums is better. You can
know one or the other. It's just it's easier to
have a conversation about the post every Time I Die
bands together, rather than, as said, taking up two different
reviews episodes with it. Better Lovers will do first. I
do think it's fair to say that this is the
one that's had the real hype and groundswell behind it.
Maybe it's just because you know, the band has been
around slightly longer now. Last year we had the debut EP,
we had a whole wave of live shows, and Better
Lovers have become for the demographic of heavy music fan
for whom like every Time I Die and the Dillanders,
Skate Plan and Bands of their Ilk are you know,
some of the core bands that make up their you know,
musical personality. They became one of the it band doing
that because obviously, in a world where those two bands
in particular are not around anymore, having basically the mathy,
crazy hardcore supergroup of those members is as close to
the next best thing, Sam, you have handily fallen into
that camp of like you know, the early doors better
lovers are obsessive. So this album, imagine, would easily be
one of your most anticipated of the year, aren't it right?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? I mean I really liked that Every Time I
Die one of my favorite bands cruelly taken from us.
That split still still kind of is a saw mark
for me, but felt like a really natural kind of like, well, look,
this is naturally just going to slot in to where
Every Time I Die was because you've taken a vocalist
from a similar but like not exactly the same band,
and who feels like such a natural kind of bedfellow
to what Every Time I Die of alled about. You've
started in with members with most of the members of
that band, and going off that EP, they were kind
of just picking up the ground of chaotic, mathy hardcore.
So I was like, it's a sound I can't not love,
and so I was like, yeah, I mean I think
that EP had like one absolutely like, Okay, this is
this guy like benchmark of what I want a better
love song to be in the thirteen like that, that's
what I still think is really great. And the rest
of it was kind of like decent and was kind
of like a cool you've got those sort of growark here.
Speaker 3: I want an album.
Speaker 2: I want to see how you can, if you can
replicate the best stuff on this. Of course, the full album,
the live show was always going to be given. It
was going to be amazing, like there was never any
doubts about that, but I was interested to see how
they particularly how those last every Time I Die albums
were the last two in particular being the most sprawling
ambitious that band ever got. Were better lovers going to
kind of like count down that roader, or they're just
going to go, okay, let's just lock in to just chaos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I've been slightly more measured in my expectations,
I think, where like I've I've had fun with better
lovers like the the EPs and and you know, the
singles for this album were very listenable, but I hadn't
found yet that the supergroup had coalesced to being more
than some of its parts where like it. It's a
lot of familiar spots of every Time I Die and Dillinger,
but it hadn't yet reached that in the song craft
and the delivery hadn't drilled the tracks really into my
head at this point. I know, Sam, like you've had
the whole live experience, and I think, obviously records like this,
it's how much the the energy of the live shows
then is able to be captured in the album, and
songs like thirty or thirteen or whatever I understand, I like,
really come into their own there. I personally have not
had that, so I only had the recordings to go on,
and while I think it's generally been good fun, I
haven't been brought back to them majorly for like much
repeat listening. And it's always been hard to get away
from the hyperbole of bit to a degree because I
think all the folks for whom you know every Time
I Die in Dillinger are like their favorite other bands,
immediately crystallize this band to such an intense degree, like
it's automatically the best, most exciting thing in the world,
and I'm trying to, I don't know, step down to
a slightly more measured expectation where you know, let's judge
how good a band this is in its own right,
just like you would any of the supergroup Essentially, you know,
is this a down or is this a giraffe tongue orchestra? Like,
here's a bunch of musicians we all like, how much
are they able to gel together to do something beyond
just evoking the past glories of their individual again careers.
I guess, has this album for you lived up to
the expectations that you had going forward of it being
something that was hopefully really great.
Speaker 2: So this album is such a weird, almost frustrating album
that I absolutely love because I fucking love this album.
I think like the core sound of it is something
that I can't not fall for it, Like it is
just doing so many things that strand of chaotic, seven
tinged hardcore that like categorized every time I die, that
Bell lovers are still picking up on that, and that
they are just hitting at it in songs that go
like ah fuck yeah, that riff is amazing. I love
this album. There is just I don't want to boil
it down to the most simple kind of criticism, but
right now there is just a little X factor missing
from this album, and I'm not gonna boil that down
to purely it's not got Keith Buckley or whatever. There's
just something that makes this album really fucking great and
not my favorite album of the year. Like the last
couple of Every Time I Die albums were they were
in that category, they were like top end, Like Radical
was my favorite album of twenty twenty one. I think
that album is still like one of the most like
dizzying everything, Like like we saw the open album, this
was like, do you like every Time I Die? Yes,
his everything every Time I Die on that album, and
I fucking love that album. Low teens might be their
most impressive kind of statement in terms of just like
the collection of songs. I don't want to be like
judging this against those albums. It's kind of hard not
to at times, because it feels like the most natural
follow on to every Time I Die work, And in
a way it is a little bit of a regression
back to the sort of thing Every Time I Die
were doing more in the two thousands. It's not as
kind of like ambitious and so in the way that
that can be a bit frustrating. But that said, as
just a collection of chaos inducing hardcore songs that are
gonna make me want to throw my body into everyone
I see at a live show.
Speaker 3: I think this sounds fucking brilliant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I pretty much completely agree. I think this is
a really fun album, and I think that that is
a positive, right. Like there, what's kind of establishing is
there's this idea that like, going into this, like you know,
every Time I Die had a run of what many
people would say, it's like a run of straight ten
out of tens or whatever. You could say the same
thing about the Indo Escape Plan, and therefore this has
to be in some way a continuation of that Skyscraper
level of quality. And I was always trying to basically
like step down from that a little bit and let's
just take it for what it is, which is like
a fun evocation of the things they used to do.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think this album is, like I'm absolutely
in the positive about it. I just don't think it's like,
you know, the kind of album of the year, big
heavy event of the year, that kind of it would
maybe position to be by like really hardcore fans of
these And if you really feel that strongly about it,
then I'm not saying that you can't enjoy it to
a huge degree, because of course it would. You know,
it fills a thing that is really really fun. I'm
just talking again, how how higher level are we talking
about this with I think we're largely on the same page.
I think you again, I do prefer these bands because
maybe the things are more me but like stuff like
Killer Be Killed or whatever, where it's like, yeah, that's
really good fun, a bunch of guys doing great stuff.
The band that it reminded me most of in feel,
I suppose is Mutoid Man, where it is like, you know, again,
some really cool cult heavy musicians really just ripping loose
and having the time of their lives. Particularly the opening
track Lie between the Lies, has a genuine like the
riff reminds me of a lot of a Kiss of
Death by Mutoid Man, but on like a hardcore based
like just kind of real sludgy, sludgy Yeah, and that's
awesome because that kind of that hits me and it's
again it's kind of easy and maybe refer to a
little bit later, but it's kind of easy to look
at Will Putney as like the lucky guy in the
room here where if you are of the persuasion where
I believe we both are that fit for a flopsy
are by far a weaker band than a Dillinger or
and every time I die and his production style, as
we've discussed in our recent reviews, being so overused, but
that riff is an instant to given credit where I can,
and this is where it turns out someone else entirely
wrote it. But I can feel a bit of that,
like tar thick fit for an autopsy flavor rubbing off
on the hardcore thing and it turning out to be
really positive. That might be my favorite befrom the record.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the guitar tone across this record,
which is something I've alwad almost every other time my Diamond,
Like the guitar tone, I think this album lives up
on that front. I think Will Partney, he does produce
this record. He's production sort of Foibles part more recently.
They're way less egregious here, I think because within the
sound that like they're working with the kick Jump hasn't
got that helicopter thing going on at all times, like
like all those sort of complaints which.
Speaker 4: I've now heard and kind of I'm sorry, we ruined
the Harry album for you, but.
Speaker 2: It's like, and that's the things I think this album
sounds fucking great.
Speaker 4: The guitar tone.
Speaker 2: I just whether it is on the southern bits where
it's all groovy, that opening riff on lie between the
lines where it is just thick and a scuzzy as
all hell Greg Again, Like there's some weird production on
Greg's vocals at times, maybe could do out, but like
always gives it a nasty vibe when he's sort of
screeching and crooning the whole like dead inside your shell.
Speaker 4: Postcorus bit goes so.
Speaker 2: Hard, like like that final build into the outro breakdown
where Greg is like just screaming, we don't believe this
is all and we believe this isn't all we were
made for fucking go so hard like as an opener,
I mean that song is really just a great kind
of like this is what better lovers are doing.
Speaker 3: If you're in with it, you're gonna have a great time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think Again really packs a wallop at the start
there and then you can have right almost play self
comes in ninety seconds. Yeah, I can go at it,
And that reminds me of something that will be on
my ax to fall I converge as like very faster paced,
punky element drowning and burning world that hits that kind
of again familiar nasty territory with those discordant guitar runs
all over it.
Speaker 4: Good shit.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite again other highlight moments on the
record is the bit into about a minute into Superman
di Paralyzed, where again, like a converged reference cutter has
that like just double bassed thrashing, just locks in and
that one moment is like destructive of all hell. I
think if you've tuned out of the record for maybe
being a little bit kind of same me at points,
that is a moment that would knock you right the
fuck back in. It's so intense and immediate. Do you
I guess, is this essentially a case of like boiling
down elements from Every Time I Die and the Dinner
escape Plan and a bit of sprinkle of fit for
an autopsy as well? Is this band that basically a
kind of does what it says on the tin situation
or do you hear moments where there is more of
a progression coming through?
Speaker 2: I think for the most part, I mean this is
a kind of does what it says. On the Tin album,
there's the odd song where they kind of show they
want to look at a bit more.
Speaker 3: They don't do it loads on this album.
Speaker 2: I think this album is almost kind of like, let's
get this sign up together. There's a lot of that,
and the like getting Alliance Given is just sort of
ripping out a crowd pleasing kind of what fans of
every Time I Die and Dillinger and again probably what
fans of this sort of bands want to hear from
them coming together.
Speaker 3: I mean again, like you get like a White House.
Speaker 2: Covered in Blood, which recovered when that came as a single,
as kind of like that is the kind of like
pinnacle of what I want the Better Lovers sound to be,
where it all just comes together to sound like the
coolest band in the world, where it's so hard. Greg
is snarling, swaggering, it's got all of the charisma that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really cool to hear him again that kind
of because it's been a while obvious since he's been
on material that's that mannic. That slurry hardcore thing at
the start was like a throwback and that's nice. I
do think that's a again obvious single on the album,
where thinking about the kind of choruses that Greg has
cooked up for these super group scenarios over the years.
He's in Killery Killed as well. I don't think that
song is like a Wings of Feather and Wax level massive,
as we were also discussing on the special last week.
But it's good while it's on, and I just you
mentioned the production earlier and I hadn't. It's interesting because
there is a particular sensation that I have with Greg
where outside of the Dinderous gate Plan or his own bands,
I suppose, like the Black Queen whatever it could be,
when you pop him in something else, there is such
a bizarre like when he comes in singing. I don't
know if it's just how other people produce his voice,
but it feels like such a like an obviously, oh
look it's Greg everyone kind of it's really like no
signposted and transplanted somehow, which is again you can imagine
Keith Buckley, for example, on these riffs, really like doing
that thing that he does of like riding the wave
throwing out random hooks, Whereas the way Greg is integrated,
like when he's screaming obviously he's screaming, but when he sings,
there is this real like and now it's chorus time.
Speaker 2: So I think the weakest parts of this album generally
come from the choruses. Like I don't think there's anything
I'd say is is bad. But when I think back
to like the particularly again the last couple of votes
of my die albums, when they hit those like choruses
or melodic parts, these don't pop off or stick in
my memory quite as much as sort of like say
a map change would of or even like an it
remembers like it just feels kind of like, Okay, this
is where you like, you kind of just got Greg
doing his kind of thing without that like real shifting
gears to make it sound like the next or level
up for these songs, which I mean is slight sham.
And I think there are a couple of songs where
they are trying to do the more melodic things, like
Deliver Us from Life is there is where it is
Greg crooning and it is trying to be a bit
more melodic or.
Speaker 1: That's not a weird kind of stonery vibe, which is
I like in theory, But again I'm not maybe with
Wills production that maybe it's a bit stodgier.
Speaker 3: It's not that that's when I compared like it remembers
on low teens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the same.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's really And I suppose you're
about to mention them at all times as well, which
I think is the biggest swerve on the record where
I can't imagine either every Time I Die or Dylan
You're doing a song quite that way with It's almost again,
it's almost like a smooth rock maybe like the southern
flavor of the Every Time I Die guys has like
rubbed off on Greg and sent him on this like
emotional radio rock front porch slow jam situation.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: If I really like it. It's a different flavor, but
I don't know if it actually works.
Speaker 2: Like these melodic bits they I go where they're going from,
I don't know if a hundred but it works this time.
I admire them taking a different swing out kind of
a melodic sound, and at Lucia they don't want to
just trade on chaos, but it just the kind of
like a big emotional something like that feels. It's like
there's a really nice, big lead guitar part to that song,
which I think is great, but it's it's an interesting
one that hasn't a hundred worked this time.
Speaker 1: I'll say, yeah, I do think to a degree, and
this will make me sound like an absolute piss baby,
but I think the way Will Putney produces everything to
be so loud at all times, I do think this
album sounds better and has less of the real negative
quirks that we pointed out on some of the other
albums that he's done. But the way it is just
so maximalist, everything is loud at all times. Even the
soft stuff like that is quite loud. I think that
maybe robs it of some of the sonic dynamics that
this kind of music in the early two thousands might
have had, and I think that might be part of
why as an overall album, I'm having fun with it,
but I'm not actually one hundred percent tuned in all
the time, because I think something like that doesn't have
the dynamics has a tendency to just kind of beat
you over the head a little bit more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do, I do think that sort of That's
me One of the other things I think with this song,
where again why I said like said, is because from
the heavier songs. It is not the most dynamic every
Time I Die song because again you look at Radical,
I say every time I Die like Bell Lovers, but
like on Radical that that song, that album goes all
low that there's so much dynamics to it, this album
doesn't quite have that same. And again, like it's a
debut album, it's quite again like ten songs or so like,
it's not like trying to rock the boat too much.
I just wish there was a little bit more like
variety on offering in the heavier moments other than the
pure casts. And again I'm so good at the pure chaos.
I can't criticize it too much because I do really
like every single one of those songs on here. And
again I'm not gonna go similarv on the next tour.
I will be flinging myself around with rect a band
in during everyone on these songs. So I can't Chris
has too much, but I can recognize it is maybe
a little more one note on the heavier side than
what it could be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think this album is fun. I like this album.
Speaker 1: I think it's you know, probably an improvement on the
EP because this that felt more like a introductory warm up,
and now you know the chemistry has worked something like
a bit more. That's less, you know, more like this
is what Better Lovers is and less various bits of
their older work kind of thrown together. I think they
are more of a unit here. I think if I
was to, you know, if I was forced to give
this album a rating, I would probably give it like
a seven out of ten. And that is again reminder,
that is a positive rating. A seven out of ten
is a good thing. I think it delivers on a
great sound pretty well. It reminds you of some of
the thing that these players certainly can do that their
imitators still can't quite do. I think this is as
good as any Dillinger or you know, certainly post debut
every time I die record certainly not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think either that's all very fair someone who's
just like, again, this is just one of my favorite sounds.
I rate this a lot higher because I just the
core components so so my ship. But I would also
like if I was to look at it like divorce
from that, I think that is a fair assessment of
what this album offers. I mean, it is I get
like it is a bit more limited than what the
the main two components that everyone's going to draw to
again the fifth and Autopsy is just kind of like
a sprinkling on top. The main two components are Dillinger
and every Time I Die. I might take this more
than maybe or not more of but maybe on a
similar level to like one of us is the Killer,
which has never been one of my favorite That's never
been one of my favorite Dillinger albums.
Speaker 3: I've always liked that album.
Speaker 2: I think the best moments of that album better about
this one, but as a whole, it's.
Speaker 4: Never been one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: I could probably feel a similar way about this that
I do about that album.
Speaker 1: Just as an example, Yeah, I would. That is one
of the weaker Dillinger records. I still think it runs
rings around this particularly, And I would say the same
thing about like my If I take the classic every
Time I Die run, the lower record to me would
be maybe something like New a Aesthetic or whatever that
record at.
Speaker 2: Again, probably where I'd put a similar level of this again,
I fucking love that album.
Speaker 1: That would be lower every Time I Die than Me
beats the piss out of this album, I think. And
that's just the kind of it's it's a super group, right,
It's a good, fun supergroup.
Speaker 2: I think there's legs to this, and I think there
is I reckon they could deliver something on the level
of the best material of Yeah, I mean, if they
are allowed to kind of build off of the ideas.
But as a sort of first statement, I think it's
really good, but it's not the classic.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm waiting a round for that.
I think I'm just kind of like, yeah, better lovers,
they're those guys. They do the fun thing. Cool, I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they go on to do something genuinely incredible,
then I will be super happy about it. Yeah, and
I will be stunned to have been to have had
my expectations, you know, exceeded in that regard. I think
right now, I'm just like like, yeah, they do the fun,
crazy hardcore thing, and that's about the ceiling that I
kind of pull on it right now. I do think it.
It demonstrates on the promise of the album cover pop
on a load of explosive shit in your face. How
much of it really sticks, I don't really know, but
it is at the very least super energetic, and then
there is Many Eyes, which I think the reason that
the Better Lovers album has been a bit more visible
is that they've been more stable and they've built more momentum.
Many Eyes going into just this debut album was a
very weird scenario that I guess we maybe still haven't
seen the full outcome of, because I guess we've not
seen them live here or anything. But Keith Buckley, formerly
of every Time and I of course wrote this record
with two brothers, Charlie and Nick Bellmore, and then Charlie
was seemingly quite suddenly and unwittingly kicked out before this
record was even released, which I think always neuters hype
to a degree when it seems like the band itself
is before even putting this deabut music out falling a
part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always a kind of a weird, like, oh okay,
so the people who made this album aren't even going
to be the ones performing it when it's out there
for everyone to hear.
Speaker 3: That. That's always an odd sort of like sensation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Bellmore brother just to give a quick
background on them, they're almost like metal journeymen at this
point because they're frequent collaborators of Jamie Jast and thus
have been in almost every band that Jasta has like
played a part in assembling. So if you know what
I mean by that, it's like a Corpse Grinder solo
album that he did there on that d Snyder's solo band,
also the Kingdom of Sorrow band that Jafta did with
Kurt from Crowbar that like the jas A factory of bands.
Almost these guys are heavily involved with that stuff. This
album I think demonstrates a bit more of a departure
from the classic every time a Die you know style
than the Better Lovers album does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is definitely not just aiming to like
for Keith to kind of go okay, let's pick up
and let's just do the chaotic hardcore thing. There is
a shift in sound on this that because I mean,
obviously Kiev as a vocalist, he always had more strings
to him than being a hardcore vocalist. He's like one
of the best clean singers to ever come from hardcore.
I would say, like he's got the voice to be
a rock star and not just a hardcore screamer. So
I could understand why if he's then non his soo
thing might make his pivots and that might allow him
to de flex more as a vocalist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the bass sound is still very much like
groovy two thousand style hardcore, right, Like the riffing sounds
less exactly like every Time I Die, because this is
not members of every Time I Die, you know, playing
the guitars here, but I think you know the bell
my brothers they have obviously studied up and they know
what they're they're dealing with. And I think you know,
the revelation riff at the start, it's fucking great, and
Keith doing that best job from the guts as he's
so often done on top of that is super gratifying.
And then it slipped into that stomp in the verse
on the same kind of riff, and it's it's really great.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think the thing of this album is there
are moments on this I think are like really great
way it does remind me of of that thing, and
but as a more like a little bit more of
a radio rock version of it, which I'm fine with
because again Keith can pull that off. I do wish,
I do wish. I think my bigg one of this album.
Is the production is I arguing is a problem on
this album. Where I was just raving about the guitar
tone on that Lover this album, it's missing on this.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I find this album actually to be more listenable
and the Better Lovers one, because I think the Better
Lovers one has that kind of like ear fatigue thing
of being so fucking loud, whereas this I can just
sit with it a little bit more. But I can
totally see that there's a middle ground to be had
where if this record was a bit basically, if Kurt
Blue produced these things, they would something fucking perfect, wouldn't
they We've always said, but it could do it being
a bit heavier. But I do find it to be
more listenable.
Speaker 4: That is.
Speaker 2: That is my thing with this album is like, I mean,
a lot of people are probably going to be having
their clause after sou I'm a little bit because it, like,
I don't know, radio rock sort of thing, like it
is a little bit optane core at times, this album
like or whatever whatever you want to brand that kind
of us radio.
Speaker 4: Yeah, surprisingly, I never actually really got that feeling from it.
Speaker 3: I think it's kind of hard to deny it.
Speaker 2: Points with some of those choruses here and the fact
that it just the sound isn't as like constantly at it.
But I do think though, like there are good songs
here and if Buckley he can turn out like like
does like turn out some great vocal hooks the choruses
like and that's the thing is where I say, like
the melodic bits are where better lovers were lacking. You
have got that kind of like powerhouse vocalist who can
give you a hook, give you a kind of like
moment you can go yeah, cool that that's that's big.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean this even still the heavy parts though, like
you know, the fuck off I'm in Love breakdown, Keith
you know, crushes that particular part of Birth in the Dam.
It's really in his skill set and you can tell
me he really fucking feels it in that moment, Like
the I mean, the lyrics in that song, the opening
verse on the album. I'm not trying to like the
implants some beef where it might not be directed in
that way, but like it's pretty difficult to hear that
verse and not think about what's been going on with
Keith immediately before this band, where you know, if the
devil ever had me, he don't have me no more.
I see some cowards, I see some frauds. I see
diamonds in I see my diamonds in the teeth of
the dogs. It is pretty harsh. I do think that. Again,
the chorus in the first track did make me go
h huh, Like I don't think it's a bad chorus necessarily.
It just feel like a real switch And I think
obviously this album is having one foot in what he
used to do, but wanting to explore some kind of
more radio ready approaches to melody and softness on it.
I don't think it's a total, you know, departure, maybe
in the way almost you could have imagined it would
be a departure, but it's kind of going for a
best of both worlds thing. And I really like that
the heavy parts that just remind me of again, Keith
Buckley doing what he does. I really I'm actually surprised
at how much I because i'd sort of because of
the weird, unsettling, unstable nature of the band already, i'd
almost not had high expectations for this. I'm actually surprised
at how good I think it is. At times, I
think like Speechless is such a ripper. I think the
intro Harbin Joe is monstrous as well, and that stuff
again hit me in a really cozy sort of way.
But I mean like Mystic Cord as well has a
real like fucking almost like a crust groove like kind
of heck, that song.
Speaker 3: Is bumbly bassed on that yeah hard.
Speaker 2: I think like Harvin just probably the hardest the album
goes that that no initial burst, the sort of the
way they bend the breakdown that goes really hard. Like,
I think there's like there is plenty to like on
this album. I think everyone who's going to be coming
this out as like a bad album, it's maybe just
kind of like again, their weight of expectation for what
Keith Buckley does is kind of coloring the sort of
like feelings because I don't think there is bad. I
think in moments of Somewhere, I think it's a little
bit wishy washy that maybe it kind of could lean
hard on the things.
Speaker 1: And again, are you thinking of like the stuff like third,
which is like a full on nineties shoe gaze, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like that that that's one where I think, like again,
I think Keith makes that more interesting than it would
be if it was in any other kind of like
like modern rock band trying to do that sort of thing.
I think again, as a vocus, he's just a vocus.
I'm more always inclined kind of My ears pick up
when I hear him sing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that song is it's almost like the
nineties revival style bands that play break right. I think
this is you know, it's no worse than most of those.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair.
Speaker 2: I think I don't think it just it just because
this am tries to do a bit more that like
it maybe lacks a bit bit of focus at times
where like, yeah, it can't zero in on a particular sound.
Speaker 3: And again I just I just think the production is is.
Speaker 2: Just something that that just doesn't just something about it
doesn't sit right for me on this record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's an album by a guy who
you know, excels at one thing and is also fairly
competent at another thing. And I think it's a respectable
attempt at integrating the latter into the former. I think,
I mean, like even like I think a lot of
the melody again, he's going for this like nineties old
rock type of thing that's less than the octane thing
I heard more someone who liked you know, grunge and
that kind of stuff. And I think a song like
future Proof starts with this almost like like b York
Army of Me, kind of like industrial sort of groove,
which is kind of cool, and I think the moving
to the melody there is like, you know, smoother and
less sudden. I guess in that kind of context, I
don't think that's a bad song at all. And then
like going back to speechless good chorus in there with
the kind of like I will kill for love, like
climbing out of it servant, I think that's a pretty
good chorus. Amateurs as well. I think across the board
he can be he's slicker with them than like in
the worst case scenarios of these.
Speaker 4: Type of things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, again, I'm surprised to hear I'm actually, you know,
slightly fonder of this album, I suppose. But I don't
think this record is perfect. I certainly I don't think
it has the completeness and the focus and that X
factor that again, you know, the best every Time I
Die records have. I think it's more one foot in
a pretty safe zone. And one foot sort of testing
the waters of something else but considering how messy just
the roll out of them in the Many Eyes band
has been. It's cool than I expected, and I think
it is again there's moves towards growth on this one
where he does feel like he's kind of looking towards
the future of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I mean we always said that about like the
damn things with Keith Buckley, where like, yeah, he was
always looking at things he could do as a vocalist
that could last longer then destroying his throat every time
I die, which is always the more like exciting thing
for me as a sort of thing. But I think
he's clearly looking at like how can he still be
that vocalist but also do.
Speaker 3: Something that can endure a bit more.
Speaker 2: And I think this is a very I think this
is a respectful first effort that I think could be
better if a few just different decisions were made with
the sound of it.
Speaker 3: And I think there is growth for.
Speaker 2: Many Eyes to sort of maybe again go on to
do something that could sound better. I think Keith Buckley
has has it within him. Maybe Again, there's not the
kind of like Keith Buckley coolness that I mean that's
maybe another factor I think isn't quite there as much
on this album, where again, some of those lines that
he would put out that I would always kind of like,
like you win, Keith Buckley screams out and every time
I die record and it's the coolest sounding thing ever.
You don't quite get that Keith Buckley on this. But
maybe that's the headspace he's he was in when writing
this way. He was doing clearly a lot more turmoil
going into this record that he's kind of exercised that
a little bit.
Speaker 3: But I'm less kin on this.
Speaker 2: Than I am the Better Lovers album, just because that
is the album that's picking up on the sound that I.
Speaker 4: Think actually really of a comparable quality.
Speaker 2: That's a fair assessment. I think it comes down to what, like,
what are you more kind of attuned to go for?
And for me, the Better Love sound is the one
I'm going to be more enticed by. But I do again,
I think people I think this has been quite a
harshly judged one for whatever reason. I think it's started
to come out there like people to say were like
Keith Buckley's the villain.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, that that rings certainly of people taking sides
and kind of having a bias confirmation.
Speaker 3: During their line in the sound and who they want to.
Speaker 1: Be rather than the qull it the record, which I
think is solid, just as I think the Better Lovers
one is.
Speaker 4: So there you go.
Speaker 1: That is the the two pars that I suppose are
coming out of every time I die and moving forward. Finally,
our next two albums, believe it or not, both of
these came out the same day as The Cure. And
when the universe decides that is simply going to be
one for the goths like that, we have to oblige.
And if that is you, then this is the point
where you've got to listen up.
Speaker 4: Firstly, we have the new.
Speaker 1: Record from Tribulation called sub Rosa in Eternum. Tribulation are
one of my favorite bands. I think if you were
to take all of their output in totality, which is
the last fifteen years, and you put it against the
same span of fifteen years from any other band, I
think that you could posit a case that they are
in the elite category of the best bands of that
time period. I think that is a comparable run too.
Let's say what someone like Ghost have put together in
that time period, someone and the Code Orange or whatever
put together. In that time period, they have been on
such a run of form, evolving through different sounds, hitting
on such a rare identity for themselves that I think,
even though they are still more underground comparatively, I think
it makes them a generationally classic bands. They are one
of the classic bands of the twenty tens and going
forward for me, But this album sees the most significant
shakeup to that that they've had in quite a while.
The last album, Where the Gloom Becomes Sounds, it's one
of their best in my opinion. It was my number
two album of the year on that on this show.
But the feeling very much at the time was that
even though we hadn't heard where they would go next
after it, it was kind of like polishing off something
like the little arc of their career that was The
Children of the Night down Below, and that very much
feels like a kind of sonic trilogy, exploring a particular
terrain of like gothic infused extreme heavy metal, and it
was taken to such a point on that record that
didn't necessarily make it clear how much more from that
particular well they could draw, like maybe there's an alternate
version of events where that is the ceiling of the
version of this band, and then they just trade in
diminishing returns if they stuck to that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: There's just something.
Speaker 1: About that record that feels like the Bow and the
Curtain call for that particular run of Tribulation records, and
you could kind of feel that the band themselves sort
of felt that way because Jonathan Holton, who was one
of their guitarists and major songwriters, left the band immediately
after finishing the record, notably stuck around to finish it
and then went as if he kind of felt like,
this is like my last offering on all things Tribulation,
and then that kind of as a book. They've replaced
him with a guy called Joseph who's also been in
you know, other bands in Sweden with them all for years.
They put an EP together called Hamasha last year, which
was still like in kind of classic Tribulation but maybe
sort of poking around at what some other perspective directions
could be. And now the first full length album this
lineup has put out, Subrows Are in a Tournam, is
the swerve that we had been expecting. I think Sam,
you were fairly lukewarm on Tribulation when we last reviewed them,
but yeah, maybe slowly coming around to them. This record, certainly,
imagine is the one that would be the most immediate
to you in their catalog. General thoughts on Tribulation before
we dive in here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so again I went back to that last album
kind of after this, listened to this kind of like, so,
how do I feel about moving on in a couple
of years about yourself? I like that album more now
than I did at the time reviewing.
Speaker 4: Sure, I just need to go back and fully.
Speaker 2: Explore every sort of previous to that. But I think
they offered, like you know, you're right, that kind of
gothic tinged, blackened heavy metal or extreme metal, whatever you
want to kind of.
Speaker 4: Like our tart to call any thing.
Speaker 2: Really, Yeah, it covered a lot of ground and I
think it was a unique sound that was distinct to them, which, again,
even if I didn't massively love it, again, any band
who can kind of have their own niche that they
have carved out, I think that's something to sort of
like admire and celebrate.
Speaker 3: But you are absolutely right in that this is the
album that has made.
Speaker 4: Go all tribulation.
Speaker 2: I have no idea how this is gonna how this
album's gonna sit with the rest of their fans, because
it is a pivot, but them going just full on
goth rocks, slinking off into the goth nightclub, but still
having a little bit of extremity that can creep up
every now and then. I think this is sublime. I'm
so in on this record. It is a vibe.
Speaker 1: So the thing I've described cribulation at various points, which
makes this have a makes sense, I guess is Explorers
because fifteen years ago, on their debut album The Horror,
they were a death metal band. Well fucking incredible one
I'd like to point out for the record. I think
The Horror gets totally over shot now and forgotten because
it's like the simplistic rivative record in light of what
they were turned into. But it is an amazing death
better record that I come back to more and more
over the years if I want that just kind of
blast of griminess. But from there, you know, they turned progressive,
they turned gothic, They invented a sound that no one's
really played before.
Speaker 4: Like them.
Speaker 1: They are a bound who I view from the lens
of often changing and kind of engaging with you know,
each record on its own terms. The whole presentation of
this record is self consciously different. Like the cover doesn't
look like a carving from a nineteen tens marble garden
or something, and it's like the cult. It's got like
a big sigil and it's like part of the cult,
part guns and roses. They've also in the photo shoots
on it. You know, they're not wearing corpse paint and
looking like they're wearing cool goth sunglasses. Everything about their
house record has been put out is kind of announcing
something different, and with that in mind, I'm actually quite
delighted by how much like old school tribulation is still
in there, I suppose, which makes the transition makes sense
and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But
it is one hundred percent tribulations goth rock pivot and
obviously know we reviewed Opeth earlier. It's a stage where
an extreme band has changed in a way that embraces
things that aren't so extreme anymore, and you know, clean
vocals are involved. It's a point where people who were
previously out like yourself to his degree, might be brought
more in and it's a point where people who were,
you know, in might find themselves kind of cast out
a little bit. And it's been funny to see the
reaction to this. I have to say, I've barely seen
a single negative comment after the album's release. I saw
a few when the first singles were coming out, like
Tribulation doing big goth choruses were singing. It's natural to
see some people trying to get their heads around it,
and as always you have the knee jerkers making some
preemptive comment about the album that's gonna be shit or whatever.
But the album's actually gone down critically and in the
fan base, as far as I can see, a lot
lot better than I had feared when I was first
sent it. I think, you know, I mean, on the
other hand, I can remember people begging Tribulation to include
some element of vocal melody, even as far back as
like down Below or the Children that because they felt
it was kind of like untapped, and there was a
group of people for whom like golf metal with harsh
vocals wasn't really reaching the potential.
Speaker 2: I think that's the thing that could have made that
last album better. To me is a change up in
vocal styles. Yeah, I'm having a bit more of that
on that last Albu would have maybe sold it to
me more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I can't agree that the you know,
golf metal with harsh vocal things never worked, because I
fucking loved it. But it was stated by people. My
immediate reaction to this album was that it was a swerve,
as I had geared myself up for it to be
that I was really really into, you know, enjoying the
sounds that they were playing with. And while it might
mark an end to what in my head I considered
to be classic Tribulation, you know, I fully expected them
to evolve and move on anyway, so I might as
well open myself up to it now many weeks and
listens down the line. I like it even more than that,
And while not my you know, my very favorite of
their albums, I think this still is classic Tribulation.
Speaker 4: It just sounds a bit different.
Speaker 2: I Mean, the thing is, is the pier that they're
going to is someone that's sow you anyway, Isn't it.
Speaker 4: Like Lesbie Real?
Speaker 2: Like this is a I don't know I'm going for
a band to compare it to, but aband doing one thing,
and then completely going it's not a self out learning
Atlantis album like like as a thing, but like to me, yeah,
this is because I was surprised.
Speaker 3: I knew this SOE was gonna be a pivot. I've
seen the talk going into it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then when like Tainted Skies after that kind of
instructory track, which is very kind of like Atmospheric has
that kind of sultry instrumental or that basic gothic creon
that's like how low can you can? You go with it?
But when Tad Skies comes in with this like gothic
noir lead guitar melodies singing to the golf club, and
then the vocals come in, it's still this kind of
like horrid barked vocals. Oh no, this still actually isn't
a total departure for tribulation. It's funny because the chorus
is all screamed, but it's huge and so like it's
still got all those things that I was, like, things
that people like to triblaseball. I can still hear it
in this. It's just less maybe like grand Gothic sensibility
and more kind of like nighttime moody gothic sensibility, and
I like, you get some jolly guitar so looking like
points in it. Like I think this is just like
a really just cool vibe.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder if it might even have reinvigorated
them a bit in terms of how people think about
them now that they have like you know, shifted again
and done something new, because I think this album was
like something like number five in like the new Decibel
album of the Earpole that's just gone out, and I
expected it to actually receive a much harsher reception, and
I'm very happy to be wrong, and I guess I
would be part of that maybe is that it does
actually manage to be so familiar and fundamentally it does
exactly what I would want, you know, a quote normal
tribulation album, if one did exist to do. The singles
from this record are all fucking bangers, and while they
exist in different modes, the first two on the album
Taintus Guys and sat and Coming Down, they filled me
with like all of the great tribulation feelings and as
you're saying, like Tatus Guys tears out of that like
sinister horror movie credits type intro track where the bassline
is so like impish. The riff is mischievous in a
way that sounds like a squad of bats coming out
at you. Yeah, and I think on that you can
hear how they're using those tools just to further eke
out that again kind of scale that was already there,
because the chorus of Tainted Skuys could have been on
a previous Tribulation record, but it's got this like backing
vocals and stuff in there that gives it this slightly
more operatic sort of quality. They produce us with Tom
Dagglety again, so it has that kind of easily tone
of you know, dark majesty. One of the things that
I really like is that they've used the clean vocals
in a way that's not just like using in the
the obvious formula you imagine, like, you know, the kind
of whatever the metal core equivalent would be that.
Speaker 2: The screen verse song Chorse, it's kind of doing the
opposite that the verse is where the clean vocals coming in.
Speaker 1: I mean it varies from song to song because then
you say, Tainted Skyles opens in sinister gothy register and
then ramps it up to straight growl and I think,
you know, he's like the best addiction and delivery of
like growled poetry for years anyway, and the fucking and
You'll See I'm your approach and the I'm the one
year before I'm dying to be born and to thrive
against once More rocks hard in that song. But they
do a lot on this album. They kind of they
deploy the different registers of vocals in ways that I've
been really delicately thought out on a case by case basis,
And it's not just like a clunky, one size fits
all approach. Because Drink the Love of God is a
riff that immediately like sweeps me off my feet, and
I would traditionally expect then a harsher tribulation vocal on
that track, but instead, you know, Johannah's popped onto that
in like sultry crooner mode, and he delivers a cadence
that I can totally imagine, like the kind of the
shadowed in the chorus. I can hear him doing that
on a previous tribulation record in the growl, right, But
it's just he's delivered it with a melody that to
me makes it a just a proper catchy song that
again has all of the production grander. I would want
from like the Cult or the Sisters of Mercy or
whatever where tribulation they always have this great thing where
their low end sounds like a booming church organ or something,
but the fucking the key change in that is like
goth radio fodder.
Speaker 2: I swear honestly like I'm During the Love of God's
one of my favorite song example, because he's got this
for like that classic rock and roll thing that's so
much kind of like goth punk, kind of like draws
on that that almost like misfitsy kind of approach to
melot to the goth melody is there. It's bombastic, fun
and catchy and like like really moment like unto others,
and that kind of vein of things as well, like
during the Love of God, and when that key change
comes in, I was like, oh, hell yeah, this is
the best. There's so many more like Saturn Coming Down,
that's a full like goth Hipshire.
Speaker 1: Saturn Coming Down is like one of my most listened
to or at least most just randomly sung songs of
the year, because it's been out of the single for
a while and it's just.
Speaker 2: So when that Saturn Coming Down Corus came and I
was like, I almost screamed with glear just the sound
just sounding so the call.
Speaker 1: And response with the guitars for me, where it doesn't
you know, Saturn coming down, and then the classic beautiful
Tribulation lead guitars kind of answering that sung melody that
is what makes that fucking pop.
Speaker 2: I think that's I think that was the thing I
know was that the lead guitar worker that is still
so heavy metal infected, which again makes it more than
just a goth rock album where I can recognize that
as a thing. I remember from the other Tribulation album
that we reviewed that there was that heavy metal like
twin lead stuff.
Speaker 1: And they are the best lead guitar band in the
world for my taste at least, like I want lead
guitars to sound the way they do in Tribulation, like
the thrumbing all through songs, the big solo sections where
they're allowed to really take the limelight, the dual trade
off sections, and hearing that run all through this record
still is like ye echol, that's still Tribulation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they the tone of it is slightly more
like goth rocking, but it's still just nice to have
like lead guitar parts that are like the driving force
behind these songs. And again there's just so many just
catchy moments on the songs hungry waters like struts along
like low based on clean the guitar parts. You get
again that call and response part, which is great. You
get a big film like ah in the chorus. There's
so much fun to be had on this album, which
I think, again I didn't necessarily get fun from the
other Tribulation album.
Speaker 3: Then there might be again when I come back to Oh,
then there is a yeah, they are more for me.
Speaker 1: They're just super like transportative, like I find them to
be the most again atmospheric, betiful kind of band. This
maybe does have a little bit more that other thing,
but I mean, I still get that feeling in these
I mean vocally, the tone of Jahannah's voice. I'm kind
of impressed at how good a singer he is because
he's he's definitely in you know, a kind of stereotype
goth register to a degree like that kind of like
warbly baritone, and is he don't know, hamming up the
theatricality of that for the sake of the vibe They're
going for I mean probably to a degree. I mean,
he might not sing these songs and an Iron Maiden
song in the same kind of way, but I do
get of all the people who are operating in that
kind of realm. There are less moments on this to
me that feel like he's doing some kind of Baddie
Curtis impression and more I imagine that he opens his
mouth and that's kind of the I mean, like, you know,
I have a you know, slightly toned down regelter, but
if I'm just singing to myself or whatever, this is
the sort of tone of like baritone that my voice
kind of naturally moves into. So I can totally understand that.
And ultimately, like he's a he's a goth rock singer.
He's singing in a goth rock style, and he does
have character I think unique to him, and the melodies
stack up, and I think that's when you get a
real departure like Hungry Waters. If again, if songs like
sat and Coming Down or take this guy's kind of
melding new and old tribulation Hungry Waters, you can hear
how much this band have been able to kind of
I don't know, bring into their Arsenal over the years,
because the groove in the rhythm section, like you can't
go straight from the horror of high speed death metal
into this, you know, like the bassline is so lushed,
a little high hat groove which is so soft to
the touch in just the right way. And your Hannah's
shines on that song where I think that's a song
where you need like a powerful presence of a singer
at the center of that to like fill out the mix.
And he does it and then some and as you say,
like trading off with the backing vocals on the Care
You Fear the Hunger is really good. The chorus with
the big backing vocals and open like rock guitar chords,
it's it's for me, it's just magic.
Speaker 2: I think Murdering Red is like the other example of
that are like the majesty of the sort of the
gothic elements where they goes that they're just more than
just kind of like a band is just kind of like, oh,
we're gonna be a bit goth this time, where they
they there's so much thought going into the sort of
sound of that one with simps the way it bursts
life in that chorus and the like laceervation on the
Moonlit Skies again just what a cool goth lyric you
can kind of put.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, the.
Speaker 1: Thing with that is they have for a long time
been kind of integrating like again, progressive rock nineteen seventies
horror score type influences into Again, previously they're quite extreme sound,
but it's a real part of their character using that influence.
And here it's like they've been able to channel those
things into essentially like goth pop songs. And again, it's
very it feels very unique to them, And I mean
there's a bit in Hungry Waters where it kind of
builds from the little like clap along piano melody part
that feels very much like that. But when they like
turn that into a whole piece on Murdering Red is
like some of the coolest songs they've ever written, I think,
because that's the one where they have made a full on,
like neon eighties horror VHS style music video for it,
because it had to be right, like you can't hear
it in picture anything else. Like the riffs and the
melodies lines, they almost feel like magpied out of a
various movie themes or something. There's like the pro ground
like electronic drums on that song, just on that one song,
and they give it a really killer, like dark synth
rock kind of touch. There is that flavor to it.
There has never been a tribulation track with black gloves
more firmly on than this one. And again, the coolest
lyrics that on that chorus, I feel so dark and
morbid the way that you know your Hannah's sings them,
because they're almost like cannibal corps sirits at points like
gess gushing blood from what was once her eyes left behind,
bodies swarming with flights. Yeah, but the way he sings them,
it's just like oozing with atmosphere.
Speaker 2: It's like gothic, like dark gothic romance that you like.
But again just like some like horrid violent lyrics. And
again that song one of the best guitar solos on
the record for me. That song, which again just another
thing it can pull out, Like I mean you say
that the pulling things. One of the lyrics is like
crystal plumage.
Speaker 3: Or metal nous Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, true, I was like he said, crystal plumage. I
wonder what it might not be, but like come on.
Speaker 4: It definitely is I know what these people like it
definitely exactly.
Speaker 2: And that's why totally atmosphere and just the vibe. I
keep some vibe, but that is just the way to
describe this record. It's so something that I'm just like, ah, yeah,
I'm just so down with what tribulation of tapped into here.
Speaker 1: Yeahord the production touches like the church bells and the
last chorus of Hungry Waters. There's the weird like warbly
ghost choir voices at the end of Murdering Red that
remind me of like the weird end of Quatza like
a little bit. There are there are songs that are
real like pure late twenty tens tribulation style still, but
they just don't make up the whole tracklets anymore. They're
peppered in because Drink You Drink Love of God, as said,
totally feels like a classic tribulation song, just as a
different vocal approach time, and the vivid ore is essentially
just an old tribulation song like.
Speaker 2: That was insanely that's the one where it's like this
grand blast of heavy meal and then it was like
oh cool that that and again in this package because
it's so of itself stands out loads yeah a good way.
Speaker 1: That's that's just what Tribulation sounded like, you know. But
at that stage in the track list, sure like throw
it in and it does sound like big and grand
with the open, doesn't.
Speaker 3: He just screams time is like so mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah is the king of that shit, I swear.
Speaker 1: And then you have a Reaping song where they fully
embrace in a quite startling way, this like beautiful rolling
Americana with like country twang on the guitars and on
the pianos, and it feels like, you know, Tribulation with
all of their very European kind of cobwebbiness and that
sort of eccentricity by way of like when bands play
the Diner in Twin Peaks and again your Hannah's nails
the soulfulness needed for that particular song and then the
synth melody that comes in after him is that is
fucking like ghost worthy, you know. And it's the kind
of things there that are spicing up an established template
I suppose because it is their like Nick Cavy type song.
But it's their Nick Cavy type song, you know what
I mean, Like, yeah.
Speaker 2: That they do that kind of nick cave sort of
thing has become such a dumb thing for a lot
of like these golf.
Speaker 4: Bands, but they found a way to make it sound distinct.
No one would make it sound like Tribulation just it.
Speaker 3: They've added their own spin of the drama of it.
Speaker 2: You get those ghostly again, those coral vocals, that's kind
of like that America tongue, a little that almost like
bloozy little flavors to they thing. And they do all
these different elements and they make it feel really distinct
to them in again a way that just makes the
song well, could just be a kind of moody little
piano number, so much more involving.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then Poison Pages is the closer, which most fully
embraces a sort of straight eighties goth rock riff like
that really swaps the kind of metal for a real
like Sisters of Mercy kind of dirty motorbike engine sort
of groove.
Speaker 4: And it sounds great.
Speaker 1: And I think I mean at this stage, like amongst
all the other bands that people always used to say
to like get people to listen to Tribulation, now I
think like if you're a hymn fan, for one thing,
you've got to check this album out, even creeper at
this point. If you like Sanguavore and that absolutely you know, grandiose, vampiric, whatever.
I mean, it's the same producer. This should be up
your alley, I think. And it's a really great job.
This album I think has done of like giving as
you were saying, each track has an identity. It's not
like they've settled in a direction and then put out
a bunch of like algorithmically produced dark wave songs or
something like. Instead, you can really feel the organic like
weaving in and out of things where appropriate throughout these
songs as each one demands, and I think, uh, you
know it results on them at no point doing the
same song twice on this All nine of these tracks
serve a purpose and they have the details that make
it collectively feel like a breathing world that I am
going to want to spend an awful lot of time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, again this is this has been the album that's
fully sold Tribulation on me.
Speaker 4: It makes me happy and.
Speaker 3: Again I do want to go back and listen to
it now.
Speaker 2: And again I know I'm not going to get exactly
what this album offers.
Speaker 1: This probably will be your favorite Tribulation album. But if
it unlocks something about the previous ones, and that's a
great well.
Speaker 2: The thing is, is the more previously relationship it's on
this album make more sense to me now and I'm
willing to kind of go with the sort of but
I probably am just going to sort of work backwards
through it now.
Speaker 3: But I think this album is I I was I wanted.
Speaker 2: I think it's I always wanted to like Tribulation, like
after I want to see what you did.
Speaker 3: And I'm so glad they've gone here he go sad
this one.
Speaker 2: We're gonna do a thing of oast sound that you
can't resist them, Like, no, you're right, I cannot resist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1: And just a reminder they are doing a long awaited
UK headline tour in February of next year.
Speaker 3: Because I want to see this.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 1: Final album for this episode and for reviews in twenty
twenty four comes from a Neon Nightmare. It's called Faded Dream.
I was a bit elusive about this on the day
that it came out in the release round up because
sort of ostensibly going into this it was an anonymous project.
It was really very much like an open secret where
he was. He was barely really pretending to not be it,
but it just very seemed to be like a joky
bit of fun experiment. Out of respect for the intentions,
I didn't name him, but he seems to have very
much lifted the mask.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: This is Nate Garrett from Spirit Drift's new project. Spirit
Drift very much still a thing as far as I'm aware,
don't worry, but this is a new thing that he
started on the side, because it very much puts its
eggs in one particular sonic basket. I mean a tribulation
of crib in from like a few clear things to
factor into their sound. Then I think it's fair to
say that this is a full blown worship band, and
I think Nate himself would probably describe it like that,
because that's very much the place he seems to have
set out to, you know, to make this from. If
you don't know Spirit Adrift, catch up, because they are
one of the best first doom but then just best
heavy metal bands around for the past several years. He
is one of the best guys at the moment at
writing like kick ass life, affirming songs through the language
of heavy metal, like writing songs that I find at
least like really lift you up. That's not the aim here,
at least not in the same way. Because this project
is a love letter to all things goth doom and
most specifically and obviously all things Typo Negative. There are
other influences that do show their heads at different points,
but the most obvious central point is Typo Negative. And
when I say it was initially not revealed who was
in the band, the comment sections under these videos when
the first singles are released full of people arguing over
whether or not it was a new band from Josh Silver,
formerly of Typo Negative. That is pretty funny, and I
feel like vocally he doesn't say anything like Jossilver really,
but I feel like you must have Typo negatived pretty slow,
deep and hard. If people are out saying that, you
actually must be someone who was in them. Sam, we
reviewed the last Spirit a Drift album. It was great,
everybody liked it. You also, to some degree, I presume,
must enjoy the works of type of Negative.
Speaker 4: Or do you like Thypo Negative quite a bit?
Speaker 1: Yeah, or perhaps a little Danzig as well. And I
think this record has kind of humble ambitions and that
it knows exactly what it wants to be, and I
don't think we need to posit as anything too much
more than what it is aiming to be. But did
you have fun with this?
Speaker 2: I mean this is what this is what a side
project should be to me, is it's a guy just
who clearly loves a particular sound just enjoying himself recreating
that sound. I think there is like right, there is
so much typo. There's I having quite a bit of
Sabbath in this points which again like.
Speaker 4: That actually yeah, that's unavoidable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like I always kind of not expecting this
to be quite so doomy. I thought this was going
to be a bit more really in the God side.
But what it is is you're just taking that big
doomy thing, putting in you know, like a bit of
eighty sympth in there and kind of like just go
sounds but big, like big belgiy for chorus.
Speaker 3: In that opening song.
Speaker 2: Like but I think this is just a really fun
listen first and that is so again sad, yeah, like no,
but it is. But it's clearly kind of a celebration
of that sound and a kind of like love letter
to it. And as a result. If you like that,
it's a really enjoyable listen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he's really gone like all out with
the homage. Like you know, you will notice that the
fonts are down the side of the album cover. There's
a version of like the sort of the famous like
life support Schigul that type of negative have He's done
like his own version of that. This is a record
explicitly for a world that doesn't have type of negative
in it anymore. And he's gone, well, i'll do it
myself then, and like, you know, is it the real deal?
Obviously they can't exactly be, but I do admire the
goal to go fuck it, I'll do that, and I
do enjoy it a great deal. I think it you know,
it starts with the sound of like waking up to
a phone call or something in the way a type
of negative album might, but then slipping straight into the
you know, the lusciousness of lost Silver. The keys that
he feels like spot on the guitar lead picking it
up at the.
Speaker 4: End is wonderful.
Speaker 1: All the tricks are really there to kind of scratch
that type of negative itch. But I had Sam and
you mentioned it. The best bit of that song for
me is in the chorus is when he moves from
the more sort of pete steelish, whispery low vocal to.
Speaker 3: That register change is so it's like really rousy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's it's when he starts belting on that
higher register is when I go, oh shit, that's Nate.
Speaker 4: From Spirit a Drift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because like his voice is his voice, and suddenly
hearing like the full blown Spirit a Drift voice coming
out of that kind of you know, chorus is fucking
awesome and it does give me chills. And I think,
you know, he's grown particular. I would say on the
last two Spirit Drift albums, he's grown to be such
an awesome heavy metal singer. And he can't you know
again like type of negative is so New York. He
can't escape that particular Southern kick.
Speaker 4: No he has.
Speaker 2: I think that's a real distinct flavor too. This Actually
that does just make it something a little different.
Speaker 1: And as much as I love all the typoisms, it's
that moment when his voice really punches through that really
moves me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it helps out the riff at that
point smashed you around the face as well.
Speaker 3: I kind of kept getting taken off.
Speaker 2: God, how much the riffs on this on this album
punch really hard because I was kind of again, there's
all the Mistress, like the really sultry goth simps and
all that, and I was like, oh yeah, and the
crude and then and then they guys go, oh, but
don't forget this is a fucking doom band. Here is
a kick ass, like big booming riff and it just
gives it so much like weight and power. And again
when playing against that chorus, it sounds enormous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he does do a pretty pitch perfect
pete steel in the middle of a Promethean gift, which
is visually really great. I really, I'm just on the
riff front. You're talking about laughing all the way to
the grave. Where As, like a fellow student of Tony
Iomi as well, Nate manages to you know, he connects
that particular Sabbath lineage in typo and he nails one
of those like up tempos or blues rock monster riffs
that they you know, would deploying songs, and that is
just straight up one of the best, like you know,
doom stoner blues, whatever you want to call it, just
rifts of the year, and like I said, a drift
is so uplifting and powerful in that kind of lane,
I can connect to that and very much feel the
same energies, even if it is like obviously much much
gloomier here because the riff is just a fucking shit kicker.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think laughing all the Way to the Grave
and they look like shadows probably like my two favorites
on on this record, by laugh on the Way Togo
that main Like I say that that main hook of
Laughing was the Way to Grave. That's great, it's really catchy.
The riff's huge. It's quite like widescreen scope when you've
got the backing vocals and pianos coming in.
Speaker 1: But it's all power, yeah, because you know, the big
elevation moments of that song are with the layered vocal,
hormonos and staff again the guitar lead echoing the vocal
at the end, they're they're really stirring. It does it
almost like very knowingly positions certain songs like kind of
in relation to certain typo Forbears, I guess, like Promethean
giff really starts to get into the sort of crawling
doom of like more like well coming down or something
like that. She's drowning is like a brilliant impression of
a very picular kind of like typeo sixties pop song
like somewhere between Burnt Flowers Fallen and too Late Frozen,
that kind of particular like you know, yeah, fun kooky
organ line thing. And I've got to say, like I
would like this album if it was just the typo
stuff with you know, a bit of Nate Garrett in
there as well, like a really pick out. But the
advanced track that I heard that actually maybe go oh shit,
we got to review this is the one where he
most obviously indulges another similar influence. We live in a
world without type of negative. We also live in one
that hasn't had good Danzig music in quite a long time.
And they look like shadows kick like our fucking mule.
Speaker 2: That it's got a great oh, a great hay like
low just swim from the drums, the strutting in the riff. Again,
I think like he is a super charismatic vocalist, like
even with Outcome Light in Dodge with that, but on
this song in particular, like he just nails it. I
think it's so just so like such a treat in
the middle of like what it is quite like somber
albums to just have this like one moment, like let's
just let's have a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because I think there's something about Typo that has
a really ineffable quality that makes it very obvious when
someone is doing a cosplay of them. I suppose I've
got maybe a theory that part of it is how
it's like a lot of Typo is literally like synthesized
and like down to the drums are like programmed and stuff,
but they have a weird way of like making that
sound like organic and human and real, and for some
reason it's hard for people to recapture that particular sensation
without it sounding kind of clunkier and more mechanized. I
think he certainly does a sterling job of it on this,
but I think in that sense I am sympathetic if
someone who is a big Typo fan doesn't quite go
with this, because they are one of the hardest bands
to recapture. But when he just switches into the dan
Zigriff on, they look like shadows. It's like I haven't
listened to Snakes of Christ like once a week for
the past few years. To not think that song is
a that is a tune worthy of a strip club
sequence in verrotica.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, that is every bit of the kind of it's
like per tough rocker like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know six like proper songs, is just
a good taste of it. It's it's drab, it's gloomy,
it's also sweet and also in the tradition of type
of negative, it's not too serious, and I think it's
it's knowing about what it is. Well, like, you know,
this isn't Grete van Fleet saying that actually the Zeppelin
aren't that big an influence on them, and any element
that might get a bit close, he can probably just
laugh off and claim some kind of sense of parody
or something, you know. And again the in Promethean Gift,
the Best Melody, the big kind of fire and my
Soul will burn me down kind of part is where
it just sounds like Nate and the way that he
writes melodies. And I'm I'm geared to like the sound
of this like second nature, because it's operating within the
realm of some of my favorite things. Ever, but the
more I've listened to this, the more I've actually connected
with the songs on their own terms and what of
himself Nate has really put into them. So I'll happily
take more of this, provided that we keep getting some
Spirit Adrift as well, which I'm sure we will.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I think that's it is.
Speaker 2: I think his passion is even again, like there are
bits that maybe can be a bit shameless in the aping,
I think it's entirely of just his love that sound
and him wanting to just kind of like offer his
take on it. And again they still he still always
finds ways to like drop a big kind of like
stone or rock riff in there, and then to make
it never sound too shameless and like like it's just imitating.
There is enough of his own personality to give this
a flavor that makes it standards called like a worthy
addition to his catalog of art he's created. And Yeah,
if he wants to kind of like all state between
Spirit Drift and this, I'm down for that kind of
like shifting light work.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I also think if this becomes a type a
pipeline for you know, type of negative fans who've been
drawn to this album to then go and discover Spirit
of Drift who are like one of the best whim
you know of their kind of field, you know, of
their generation. I think I welcome that. So the band
is called Neon Nightmare. As said earlier today, you know,
with the publishing of this episode, we are going to
be opening the poll for the That's Not Metal Listeners
Album of the Year. Again, if if you're listening to
this like the second it goes live or something, give
us a minute. It'll be up by like midday or something.
But the pole will be there on the master focus
group Facebook page. It will also, as said, if you
are not able to jump onto that, you can send
us your lists via whatever, like you know social media
channels that we have. If you are in the Patreon, discord,
et cetera. Please again make sure to give these records
a listen before if you've not, you know, before finalizing
your list, because there's some really great stuff here that
you shouldn't fly under the radar just because we reviewed
it at the end of November, and you do not
need to have your lists in by the end of
voting day one. You've got some time, so go and
think on it. But whenever you are ready, come back
to us and give us those lists. As said elsewhere,
we got the twenty fourteen special on the that's the
matter of Patreon to give you many, many hours of
a reminiscing and nostalgia about all things that are going
on there, really really fun time. So if you would
like to give us your support, then you can go
and find that at your disposal along with us, you know,
sepulturer Band Special, the Election fire Band Special deal, all
that stuff that we've done over the course of twenty
twenty four. Next week will be the beginning of our
albums of the year, so I've got scurry over and
start really putting the finishing touches on that.
Speaker 4: So thank you for listening everybody, Thank you for.
Speaker 1: Rejoining us if you are rejoining us, and we look
forward to rejoining us next week when all that gets underway.
Speaker 4: Bye bye