Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back. So that's not metal. We
are your weekly rock, hardcore, heavy metal, heavy music show,
and we are here with another one of these big
reviews bags that we do here every month, highlighting some
of the most exciting noteworthy stuff that's coming out. We
are back again after last week. I just gave a
little report about all of the many various goings on
that I had going to Fortress Festival seeing like the
black metal, going to Mystic Festival seeing some more black metal,
but also lots of things that weren't black metal. And
it has been a very busy time since then with me,
Sam and Elliott are here. Sam, you, I mean I
was looking at your like figuring out via your Instagram
how many like consecutive days you were like at big
shows and stuff. And there's been everything going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So obviously Sean Friday had the weekend off and
then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday I had free varying sort of
size shows, but like one very big show. But yeah,
it's been a busy few days.
Speaker 1: The reviews very thankfully for you, given that are very
much things that you would be sitting and spending time with. Anyway,
we have got today to talk about the new albums
from Turnstyle, Malevolence, Straight from the Path, Kay and Ashy
Dead Guy and Hex Vessel, or as I have been
calling it, Big Hardcore Summer, and then a few snowy trees.
For some fucking reason, some of the stuff that Sam
was alluding to there is obviously Outbreak happened this weekend.
What we're going to do is we're going to have
you talk about all the things that were outbreak related
on next week's show, because said we've got other stuff
to talk about. Obviously Download happened as well, which none
of us were at, but you know, been observing the
goings on there. Apparently Corn and Green Day were both
fantastic as like you know, new you know, very established headliners,
Sleep Token fantastic for the fans who are very much
there for them, I think, as you could probably imagine
a lot more of a divide between the people who
were there for them and everyone else who was not.
But I guess that's to be expected. Otherwise, we have
got to talk about another thing that has happened since
all of that this past week, a couple of days
ago in fact, for I guess the both of us
me and Sam were both at some of the first
dates of nine Inch Nails is twenty twenty five what's
called the Peel It Back Tour, which I guess when
you look at the staging and what they've kind of,
you know, named those things after is I guess it's
because they are gradually peeling back the layers of the
v rules and everything. So we're going to talk about
the staging and stuff as well. But the first dates
of nine Nails peel At Back Tour. They opened it
in Dublin, then they hit up Manchester and then London,
and then over the next few weeks I'll be taking
it I guess everyhe else across Europe. I was at Manchester, Sam,
you were at London. This is a show that is
very kind of deliberately separated into certain acts. So what
we'll do is we'll kind of go through the again,
how the kind of staging of it worked and everything,
and talk about maybe some differences we had as well,
because there are naturally a lot of setless differences from
night to night with a nine its Nail show. But
going into this nine Inch Nails tours, I think increasingly
at this stage each one feels like a real like
grab them while they're their sort of event, because we
don't necessarily, you know, they're not as consistently active at
present in the rock scene as they maybe have been,
and so every time the Nine Inch Nails kind of
touring behemoth decides to awake for a little while, it
is a big moment. This is particularly so maybe for
this one because you know, the last time they did
a tour in twenty twenty two, I can't remember they
played in London, but I saw them playing the Apollo
in Manchester. That's sort of like Brixton, Yeah, Brixton equivalent
type venues. This time they went fuck off big mode
and they've played some of the biggest arenas in the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ota Arena in London. They went big on this.
I mean, this is this felt like the first proper
Nine inch Nails tour for a good one. I know
they obviously they have been around, but it's always going
to almost felt like sporadic kind of like dates and
little things popping up as opposed to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty twenty two to one was the first like
big tour they don't know while as opposed to like
we're playing the Royal Albert Hall or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, also that, but because I think it felt
smaller venues, it still didn't feel like the kind of
like Nine Inch Nails are back as a touring like Behemoth,
as you say, so this felt like a real kind
of like this is one of the event shows of
twenty twenty five. Is the first like named Nine Inch
Nails tour like like real events or showcase.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting this doing this like the week
of again download festival, right, because that's a download festival.
They've done all new headliners and stuff like that, and
bands like Corn who have kind of been in that
forever the bride'smaid sort of position that Nine Inch Nails
have been in for a long time as well, have
been brought up and when you look at Oh, you
are like filling really big arenas and in terms of
a show and a like arena presentation, right, I've said
before Nine Inch Nails, certainly of bands of their vintage,
which this is like a thirty five year old or
something band at this stage are there's an argument that
they are the best live band, particularly of their sort
of generation, that you can still go and see today.
I've said this before and having now seen them go
into a massive arena and bring a not only their
usual kind of you know, tensed in the performance, but
actually fill that arena and do clever things with the
arena beyond. Just like here's our usual thing blown up
a bit more. I think the thing with again the
event nine and Snails towards is because everyone is almost
reimagined to some degree. This is absolutely something where, you know,
if it's a download policy or whatever, to be like,
we are giving shots to bands who maybe in a
previous era or the festival we wouldn't have. It's hard
to imagine many arena shows from a heavy band more
absolutely convincing of an imperious sort of status than the
one that we both just saw.
Speaker 2: There was a thing when I Snails obviously because obviously
they haven't festivals. That's why I think kind of been
the thing with them, isn't it. They've always been a
bit of a pretty festival ban and everyone's said, don't
go seem at festival, go seem at a headline show
or that. So it could be a factor. But if
we are just talking about the show they just put
on the spectacle the steps actually thought out, it was
how nothing felt like a gimmick. How nothing felt over done.
It is one of the best of me. Like and
again that's even before we get onto the band, who
were like Jesus fucking Christ, I've never seen nine Hours
before and my God, as a band, they are an
absolute force of destruction. I was sat in the O
two not like right the back on the sort the
lower tier dis way back, and I felt like my
chest was being caved in at points.
Speaker 1: The deliberateness, like I was saying, of the entire the
show roll out of It and Its Nail's tour, it
goes as far as the fact that the support app
for this is a DJ called Boy's Noise, right, And
the way the staging was set up is basically obously.
There was, of course that the main you know, normal
arena stage. Then in the middle of the floor there
is what we've kind of taken to calling the Evil Cube,
right because before and Its Nails actually came on stage,
there was just a massive, ominous black cube, you know,
black square in the middle of the floor, completely veiled
over and it nat you know, especially because the arena
was just like before again anything was on it was
just a red light, yeah, red light and there's this massive, ominous,
like proper void of a you know, dark energy like
in the middle of the room, emanating you know, scary
forces like something out of like the Black Lodge in
Twin Peaks or something. And like we saw like that
every now and then before again, before the shower had started,
some crew member wearing like a head torch or something
would walk through the crowd into the cube and then
be consumed by it as he's lost to the cube now,
never to be seen again. But so there was this big, big,
you know, black square in the middle, and then there
was another little stage at the back and that was
like it's you know, the very back of the seating
also the floor area, and that's where Boy's Noise played, right,
So there was three stages across the arena floor basically,
and the fact that Boy's Noise was supported right again,
you know, he was a DJ step sounded pretty coold,
just kind of heavy electronic y music, exactly what you
would imagine, you know, being adjacent someone like Nigs Nails.
But it's not just like, oh, he was the support act.
Like the way the tour worked, it's like the support
act was deliberately specially baked into the layout of the
show because he basically did his DJ set directly into
night like there wasn't a gap, like he was playing
and then nine s Nails appeared in the middle bit,
and then as we'll get onto he became part of
the set later on as well. So it's even as
far as like you couldn't swap in any other support
act just like you know, buy on or whatever to
be part of this. It's like the presence of Boy's
Noise as a support was like one and only for
this show set up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a cirset thing. I came in there
like I kind of heard it was like a DeSUS
so I was like, all right, cool and Alton and
I was like, oh, this is so he's still playing
like the music before the band come on, none of that.
It was just there's like really intense kind of like throbbing, pulsating,
dark heavy dancing was kind of going as like like
I said, the arena was just bathed in red like
he is at the sound desk on his stage. There
is the cube then and I was just like, fuck me,
this this is already really intense, like and this is
just the support DJ set as the band are getting ready,
what's actually going to happen once it kicks off? And
then yeah, when it kicks off, it's kind of like
not what I was expecting to start. I'd not looked
to set this or anything. So when the cloth on
the cube drops and there is Trent on a piano, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a different perspective on this. We were
about three rows from the barrier of the middle Cube
stage right, and we didn't you know, it wasn't any
case of like I've got to go in, I've gotta
get barrier or whatever, because we were in the middle
of the floor space basically, but we just walked in.
Speaker 2: There was the Evil Cube.
Speaker 1: I guess we were naturally drawn to its dark energies
walked over to it, and then we were like, oh,
you know, we're actually like really really close to the
middle stage where you knows are going to be for
at least parts of the show. They did like a
crowd entrance thing, right. We ended up basically being essentially
like we were standing there, and then the security guard
people appeared like a little walkway with like taping it off.
So Trent Resnor walked right past me to get through to.
Speaker 2: Like the middle stage. Bit.
Speaker 1: I was just like, that's just Trent Resner, just like
about a foot away from me walking right past. And
then as it happened, the side of the the you know,
the cube barrier we were on was behind Trent's back
when he was playing piano.
Speaker 2: So my view for the.
Speaker 1: First three songs was about, you know, like two meters
away or something looking over Trent's shoulder as he plays piano.
Speaker 2: For the first things. That was kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: And then obviously the second like utilization of the cube
stage had a very different energy as well. But as
you're saying, the opening act of it is, you've got
this really intense you know, boys noise, you know German
electronica thing, and then the cube you know, dissipates and
there's Trent having appeared through the crowd at the piano.
And the first three songs of the Nights Nail set
are piano some originally piano songs, some reworked piano versions
of ninage Nail songs that are not normally songs, And
you know, sure like maybe some people would rather just
hear like the original full band version of like some
of the songs that we got or whatever. But it
speaks to again the way you know his nails. Every
tour there is so much thought about kind of what
can we do that we haven't done before?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean for me, I was kind of like
what made this work was like when Trend's out there,
I was like, oh yeah, there was some cheers and
then he started playing and it's the most silent I've
ever heard in arena. Yeah, true, complete transfiction on on
Trentles doing these songs. I was like that that that
is the respect he commands as a musician, as an artist.
We're not gonna fath about. We're not gonna spoil this moment.
And it was it was kind of one of those
like I was just again just like fucking hell, this
is the coolest way to open the show. And that
kind of like because I don't notice he did the
one song completely by himself on the piano, and then
so part through the next song and they start to
sort of arrive on stage and start to add build
onto it more and ill the full band of on
for song Free, which is Piggy, and I was kind
of like, this is just a really cool way of
like gradually building the show up, and I was like,
it's gonna, you know, properly kick off soon, and slow
starts to shows can't always work. But I've seen some
bands they do this and it's kind of like it
feels like the momentum, you know, you start showing you
want that bang like your Aces Highmen or whatever like that.
It's a start. But this was special way to begin
to try this, and it felt like something they like,
not every band can do, but again, this is Nine
Inch Nails.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the three songs they did in the pianos
as well were completely different between our nights.
Speaker 2: I know that.
Speaker 1: I think Dublin got the same as what you got,
So you got right where it belongs to the opening song,
which is the ending ballad on with Teeth, which is
aside from the obvious hurt. I think that's my favorite
Nine inch Nails like ballad, so I really wish we
had got that one. And then you got an acoustic
version of Ruiner from the Dows viral. And then as
you say, Piggy, we got the opening song right was
A Minute to Breathe, which is a Trent Reznor and
Atticus Ross song from a Leonardo DiCaprio climate change documentary.
Speaker 2: Why not, Like.
Speaker 1: The first time trenton piano and he's playing a song
that again, like I didn't immediately recognize.
Speaker 2: I was like, what's this? But it was cool.
Speaker 1: And then we got a piano version of That's What
I Get from Pretty Hate Machine, which, according to setlist FM,
That's What I Get has not been played in any
form since nineteen ninety one since the Pretty Hate Machine tour.
And he's playing piano but behind me from the main
sort of stage speakers, I can hear like the Digga
Digga Digga did did like electronic culor bass part coming
in intermittently. And then the third song of our piano
bit was a piano version of the title track of
The Fragile, which was really beautiful and wonderful and like
I literally I could. I looked across to the other
side of the barrier and there's some guy in the
front just.
Speaker 2: Like weeping, just like absolutely blaming. Yeah, that would have
been magical, Like oh man, that again, Like I'm jon,
I'm most like, you know what I got? Would I change? Yet,
I'm like, I'm not so sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the band they are so as we're saying,
you know, piano Trent first and foremost, having gone through
the crowd, and then the rest of them, the acolytes
of the cube, because Atticus was like the fully hood up,
like a monk, joining with them. And then there's a
transition where they go from that first day onto the
actual main stage and it's full band nine, its nail show,
and the first songs of this like second act are
wishing to march the Pigs, and it's like the the
energy of those two things completely flipping from one end
of the spectrum into the like rowdiest, most intense, like
double of nine is nail songs you could feasibly put together.
Speaker 2: Was genuinely batshit. Let's fucking go if I would have
rip my seat out and thrown it because again that's
probably my favorite nineties sail song, Like that's much the pigs.
And again this is what I was saying, like the
intensity of the frosty, the power them doing those two songs. Trent,
there were moments in London in particularly he had the
bit between these teeth. He was not in a good
mood in this London set.
Speaker 1: I know there was some there was some more tech issues. Yeah,
there were some tech quatures ground very smoothly.
Speaker 2: But part of almost was like he kind of played
up his reputation as being a bit of a surly,
grumpy git at times, but like other times he channeled
it into like just making his performance that much more ferocious.
But this is one too of wishing to march the pigs.
Those just like rifts, just like hammering you down. This
could be one of the best I've ever seen right now,
Like just on this sort of one tube, I was
always going to be slightly more sort of squot up
in it because my first time seeing nine inch nails,
But going from that like beautiful piano intro to store piggy,
it was kind of like feeling like a bit of
a kind of building to a bit more intense to
then just like, this is the most violently, ferociously intense
thing I've ever seen in Like and again, I've just
watched a bunch of hardcore shows and I'm saying it's
about ninety I was in an arena, like that's how
fucking amazing this was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this second act of it, when they're on
the main stage, there was another cube, right because there
was a I guess what you describe as like I
don't know, like a transparent.
Speaker 2: Sort of screen around the stage. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so Night Smails are on the main stage now,
playing inside what looks like a sort of projection, and
they're like, obviously there's projected like images and visuals and
stuff like over this screen that's in front of them,
but you can still see them behind it. And this
is where the peelt back thing comes in because this
is on setless FM. I only realized when I looked
at this, but on setlss FM, this is labeled as
the unpeeled main stage, and when they went back to
it later on the screen disappeared it was the peeled
main stage. So the idea is it's a stage that
kind of like gradually, you know, reveals itself and moves
further backwards. But this part when they had like the
sort of projection thing around them some of the coolest
like highest I don't know, like the best execution of
like a high concept style arena visual I have ever
seen personally, because the I mean, like when they're doing Reptile,
which it's just so like oppressive and like just lurking,
but like the horrible like sickly green aura that like
filled the screen around him and it had like static
and stuff like moving up and down it. And then
the best example was during Copy of Her when there's
like fifth like all around him, like it was fantastic,
like COPYOV was when.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is like legitimately one like cause
again like he tried to come out with the best
line during Reptile when things were working, it was most
complicated lights wherever, and we get taken out by a
mike cable like that was where I was if you started.
But it feels it's like in a way it's almost
like really simple but so complex the same time, and
how it all kind of plays together.
Speaker 1: Well, particularly when you when you look at the camera
man as well, who was running around like in the stage,
like getting up in Trent's face and stuff while Trent's
face is being projected onto like.
Speaker 2: The screen like it was. It was amazing. And so
that was like the really like I.
Speaker 1: Don't know, the really heavy like metal you know, part
of the stage. And then they go back to the
B stage the thing in the middle, and suddenly boys
Noise appears right the DJ and the next three sets,
which again I think there's one song that they've been
doing every night during it, which has came back haunted,
but the other two songs have being which fine, yeah,
which the other two songs they've been swapping in and
out variously. But we basically then got nine inch Nails
techno set for three songs with three right like hard
bass version like remixes Ofsdale songs. And I remind you
I'm about three rows from this fucking thing, right And
when the cube like ceiling started descending again, I gen
it looks like in like fire in the sky or
something when they're getting abducted by aliens. It was the
most intimidating photo of a stage I will ever take,
because it was descending on top of me.
Speaker 2: We had like I'd never be like higher up. There
was a beaming sort of smoke. Yeah that as well,
Like it was like you know, I was was this
from a distance, but I was like, I canmber what
I was I wasalking about. God, you must have felt
like I'm entering, Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it filled my entire stage of field of Virginia,
Like I couldn't see the top of it. So it
basically had the impression of like for these three songs,
I am like up close and personal in the nine
inch Nails Rave Club. It was really fucking surreal and
so for us they played again these are like really
like fucking hard techno version of these songs. They did
Vessel from Year Zero, which is the one that goes
oh my god.
Speaker 2: But he was like Trent was like.
Speaker 1: Moving back and forth between like a robofied mic to
go oh my god, and then back to a normal
one to sing the rest of it, and like a
hard techno version of Branches Bones from the not Actual
Events EP. I see that you got a different Year
zero song the Warning and also only and then as
they've both got came Back Haunted, but like this was
again having done this massive projected light show arena show
to then halfway through the set flip it into like
a really intimate, sweaty kind of like industrial club environment
where this is genuinely a show that was like equal
parts a rock show and like an EDM show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they they show it's the full sort of again
that remix of like came Back Carding in particular, I
was just like, right, limbs are flying.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: Like so like the like again, I I fucking love
the hesitation mark and like like again came back carding
and copying. There's all the big to you reach you,
I think, you know, off the back of like Challengers
and like that sort of soundtrack like nice. I was
kind of challenge that into like versions of their songs
which already kind of like big beats nine in is
Now songs, and it's kind of going bigger beats like
and the lights you're coming from the top of the
stage the bottom of the stage, so you like and
almost like there were like cubid in by lights of
points where the lights were sort of rising up for
the bottom and coming down from the top, and it
was like, this just looks so fucking cool. And it's
funny because again I was far back, but I kind
of felt quite close up close to it because it
was so just like in your face at that point. Again,
I've not seen any from light sat and Marina. The
show before bands take these kind of create swings and
do these kind of like reinterpretations of your songs. It's
so fucking cool when it's done right.
Speaker 1: Yes, And then the final act show they move back
to the main stage, the big like veil thing disappears,
so it's just knowing its nails the band and they
just run through what again, swaps here and there, but
what generally just seems like a big load of hits
for the end. Yeah, so I'm quite jealous that you've
got mister self destruct. We got somewhat damaged in that
spot to like open it up. But they seem to
be playing heresy everywhere. I have now seen two nine
inch Nail shows and not seen closer like that's done,
like managed to skip over completely every time I've seen them.
But I see you've got that the perfect drug was
in there. They seem to be swapping that in the
hand that feeds. But like when that fucking dum dum
dum dum dum dum dum dum like fills, everyone's going like,
oh my god.
Speaker 2: So sick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then ending one to head like a hole
and then, as they always will do, hurt and it's
like that the the the intensity, the grand projection of it, everything,
everything the show has gone through, then you know, being stripped.
Speaker 2: Back to the point of hurt coming full circle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen it thrown around a couple times this
week that Nanis Nails have are a contender to be
like the greatest live back act that our world has
ever produced, having you know, seen a couple of shows
of theirs all in recent years, let alone you know,
back in kind of the you know, their kind of
golden years. The fact that they continually do bring such
clever ideas and such tent to detail on top of
what is already like vitriolic performances of some of the
greatest music. This is obviously like this is like the
ideal of what an arena show is meant to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean if you were like vitual performance head
like a hole was one way. Again, I think after
all the technical issues, Tren had had enough and he
was like a man just like excising always rage smashed
his cart then and I was like, you know what,
smashing you can talk can be a bit of an
overdone thing given like just the performance was. I was
like that feltm was like almost like we're broken news,
Like fuck it, let's just wreck the whole thing. And
I was like Closer was like such a funny member
because it was the moment like every girl in and
most guys were just like right, it's corny time. Like
I was. I was like, you know what, like I'm
with you because like that song, but it wouldn't be
fun to see that in the RAF set with like
a remixed version. That would have been really cool actually,
but it was still like, you know you think that
that that like drum machine beat coming in. I was like, ah,
here we go into like the sexy club mode and yeah,
her as a closer and her just again it was
that feeling of like where they said where they ended,
of just like these really laid, bare ballads. I was like,
I was almost crying at her. I was almost moved
to tears because I just this the the emotions I've
gone for over this two hours of sort of singles
band of one for fucking years, finally again see him
and then being on this insane form and then ending
with like such a perfect ballad, like unbelievably for all
the show, and like, I'm so glad I finally got
to see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just seem to get one more song than
we do, Jammy, but yeah, it was phenomenal and not
just like again one of the best bands, but as
like a live event and draw. I can't imagine many
stronger sort of declarations of intent than this kind of thing. Obviously,
I really do hope we get nice to have music
at some point, but the Pila Bato and I was,
I will be looking with interest at further set lists
and stuff, further rarities if they're just going to decide
our date to go, like, yeah, we're gonna play that's
what I get for the first time. It's nineteen ninety one,
but it's going to be a piano version as the
second song of the set, Wild Elliott.
Speaker 2: Have you been this week? Sad?
Speaker 3: I'll be seeing the I'll be seeing the Stranglers in
eight days. Oh no, you can all be green with
jealousy and nauseous with envy then, because I don't mind
that I didn't see nine Snails. I was, I've got
an early night, which is actually healthy. It's good to
get to sleep. So fine.
Speaker 1: I mean, I came out of our show and it
was bizarrely not even fully dark yet, so it's not
even that.
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, news wise, not a ton going on this week.
Like I said, it's mainly people talking about outbreaking and
download as well. Just I think just before we recorded
last week didn't talk about it. But there was a
Biffy Cleiro song that came out called a Little Love Sam.
Have you heard the name Biffy Kleiro song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it. I've noticed it loads because they've
been listening to some of the other things and not
at the time to settle down with all the shows.
But like good first bif for Claire single it's not
you know, instant history where they released that his first
thing when I was like, oh, what's the new, I'm
going to be like this. This is much better, sort
of like yeah, this taste of new material.
Speaker 1: This is like pleasant pop song Biffy Cleiro, which is
not my favorite mode of theirs, but it didn't make
me recoiling disgust like some of theirs have.
Speaker 2: So there's that.
Speaker 1: In terms of looking at future festival stuff, the main
thing that's happened this week, i suppose is a Damnation
added an announcement with three bands. One of them is
a band who have just played Download and apparently had
a fucking whaler a tie with Download with a really
healthy looking crowd and everything filling at the tent and
now in the thrack we're going to be playing at
Damnation Festival. And they've also added among the smaller bands
at it, Coil Guns and Hidden Mothers, both of whom
are like, you know, the kind of small under it,
like that's perfect again sort of lower half poster Damnation
fair of like cool, exciting, you know, bands that people
like that, that's what we really want to see. But
an Anathrat being added.
Speaker 2: It's not a game.
Speaker 1: Changer because they play there like all the time, but
at the twentieth anniversary Damnation, it would be weird I
think to not have an ana threat there because I
think anano thrack, if it belongs to any band they are,
I think probably have the title of like Damnation's favorite band,
particularly of the house band, aren't they, Yeah, of the
really like heavy, stupid, busted extreme ones. So yeah, obviously
I want to see a nano thrack performing Damnation's two
day twentieth birthday bash.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like their logo on the poster, it's it's
like having that super hot salsa at the tackle bar.
It's just like just throw it in there and it
just the whole thing seems more exciting for the presence
of anal of the thraatcause just start imagining the runs
that might happen. And I think I think I'm right
in saying that the Sunday is going to have Pig
Destroyer and Now on the thrack and Napalm Death, which
you think that's probably gonna be like, yeah, three hour
span clear in this you know, like Jesus, I know,
and that seems lightweight by comparison, You're like, oh, that
would be a nice bree you can have a sandwich
or they're on the other stuff. It's like that's it's
starting to get like it's sound as just being exciting
to like kind of daunting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and obviously it is split over two days. But
like the top four rungs of this post now, which
are like the bigger logo rungs are Corrosional Conformity, Napalm Death,
Perturbator Death, Heaven Arm and Rah Orbit Culture which you know, yeah,
but some people like him, High on Fire, the Haunted,
and Now in the Thrack Pig Destroyer Warning that's like
one of the greatest selections of heavy bands, like you
can feasibly assemble, that's fucking ridiculous. And that's before you
get to the lower half. So yeah, one edition of
those higher rungs to Damnation. But when that band is
a now in the thrack, and as I said, they
are the house ban the favorite band it makes all
the different so wonderful stuff seeing that there, and then
weirdly post download you would normally expect like the huge
you know, like all the post download tours.
Speaker 2: And stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I think like Ginger announced the UK tour and you
know a few of them came out, but there weren't
the really large ones you would expect.
Speaker 2: They've announced their tour supports. Is kind of like almost
that the biggest one on my end of things, because
that tour package is ridiculous. I feel like that that
was an open secret, there was it. Everyone knew already
that people who two of the three ones, but like
getting confirmed and adding Psycho Frame, who are a really
fucking cool band, that's a that's a tasty day.
Speaker 1: Out, Like yeah, but I can't believe that the tour
announcement coming out of download that most maybe go what
is a cky UK tour where they're doing a quite
lengthy UK tour. They're playing in Birkenhead and the support
act for Cky is Brent Heine's Fiend without a Face.
So Brent hind is going to be making his first
appearance in the UK postmastered on in a a couple
months time with his fiend of Without faceband supporting c
ky In, probably because they're doing everywhere a venue near you.
I'm weirdly tempted. I want to go see what in Birkenhead,
what Brent Hines is up to, and then go doing
like this is a really bizarre announcement.
Speaker 3: I h I'm not as tempted.
Speaker 1: You do you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Again?
Speaker 1: Like I said, I'm just like really bizarre, really curious.
But there you go of all the big post download news,
there's something okay. The rest of this show is going
to be dominated by us doing what we're here to do,
which is talking about the new albums that we're going
to be that we mentioned earlier. But I should throw out,
as is usually customer, when we have the time, we're
going to do an album club pack. I think this
is maybe gonna come like first couple of days of
July to depending on our schedules. But I am going
to announce you right now what are album clubs for
the ensuing episode that fine show will be. And I
feel like, I don't know, there's a certain there's a
vibe around this batch which just gives me some some
interesting feelings. And you know, again I take suggestions on
board from Sam and Elliot here, but I do to
some degree like to surprise them.
Speaker 2: As well at moments like these. So here we go.
Speaker 1: First off, is actually a band who we normally never
cover because you could argue they don't really have anything
to do with us, which is kind of the point
of why we're actually gonna do it this time. It's
not an awm I think any of us like. But
I was reminded by I was reminded by a certain
tenth Anniversary Rock sound cover CD recently, that Blurry Face
by twenty one Pilots.
Speaker 2: Ah, it is.
Speaker 1: Turning ten round about now, and again, you know, not
all of us, maybe any of us probably like that album,
but I think it is the perfect time with that
sort of amount of time removed, to look back at
that moment and try and suss out what was going
on there, because the more time passes from the twenty
one Pilots phenomena be at his peak, the more bizarre
it seems.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: So, you know, for one time only maybe tear them
does twenty one Pilots is going to happen with that
album discussion, And then for a second one I was
just thinking what would be the funniest possible just switch
around from that, and so man.
Speaker 2: O War Born to live forever more.
Speaker 1: We are going to do an effort to convert Sam
by selectively choosing.
Speaker 2: I'm converted by Manual. I've been in like man of
War rockers like it's happened, like.
Speaker 1: Well, here's an album that I think you may enjoy.
We're going through their debut album, Battle Hymns as the
follow up to twenty one Pilots Blowing Face, and then
it gets slightly more normal fair. I think when we
have been slowly working our way through all of the
emo and alternative rock classics of the early twenty tens,
there's one that is almost like the final boss of
emo bands, going Shoe Gaze, but obviously with Turnover doing
their upcoming tenth anniversary shows for Peripheral Vision. Okay, that
is one that we have been building to for a while.
Speaker 2: I think, what what did you think I was going
to say?
Speaker 3: I think you said title fight.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say title fight. I
don't know Dick about title No, they're playing in full
of a couple months. Of course, we have to do
peripheral Vision. It's obvious. Yeah, no, we do, we do
yes absolutely wo Hey yeah great, yeah good, so we're
doing that. You worried me for a second. I was like,
what is going on here?
Speaker 1: And then finally in our underground slot, we are finally
going to do one of my favorite bands who I
name drop all the time, but we've never done anything
on the musically, and we are going to find out why.
The shining light of the occult rock boom of around
twenty ten was The Devil's Blood and their album, the
debut album, The Time of No Time. Ever, so that
is our album club selection that we will be getting
to in like just over a week or so. Twenty
one pilots into manor War. You only get it here
on T and M, and so let's continue on their
Patreon dot com. Slash That's Not Metal is the place
to hear those things when they drop. First of all,
let's get into reviews, and as I said, it is
hot hardcore summer for some reason. Until our very last
album review, almost all of the like the albums that
we thought were really worth talking about this month come
from the world of hardcore, and the biggest of all
of them, obviously is where we start with Turnstile and
the new album Never Enough, the fourth turnstyle album, Here
we Go, the follow up to twenty twenty one's Glow
On an album that I think you could make the
case convincingly that that is the definitive rock album of
the twenty twenties are because it is an album with which,
you know, a hardcore band who had been dabbling in
a bit of crossover success on the Time and Space cycle,
but with Glow on the they fully went over into
becoming something new that arguably didn't really exist before, and
they pretty much with that they've joined the likes of
Ghost and sleep Token as the rock bands that you
could categorically to some degree have say say have made it,
and they pretty much define what the big class of
heavy bands in the twenty twenties are. And both of
those bands, of course, have released albums in the last
couple of months, and if I'm going to put Turnstile
as the third of that level of event release going
into the summer, they are obviously by some way the
smallest of them, but based on the near immediate canonization
of go On as a work of significance, I would
imagine that this is the album that most people listening
were most ravenously looking forward to as like major album
of the year contender or whatever else you might say.
In a year when we have just had as said,
Ghost and sleep Token in the you know, rearview Mirror
Sleep Go can just headline download on their and everything else.
It takes them going that this very clearly felt like
the most anticipated album of this year. Turns Dole's follow
up to glow On.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I think that you're going in to glow On,
which you quite rightly say, is already kind of held
it as some sort of modern classic, and rightly so
I follow going into that there were a hype band
where people like expected greatness, but maybe they didn't know
just how great and how consequential that record was going
to be. On this record, they're now following that up.
You know, four years later, hardcore is in a way
different place, and that the number of bands like who
come up now, who just wholesale rip off turnstile like
everything from like the promo pho, so was the album covers,
like the imagery, the sound, like the whole thing has
been lifted by so many bands. Some bands have done
it really well. Some bands it feels really like it
stinks a bit of like the new metal bands in
like ninety ninety nine, who would like the sort of
cold chamber end of things, and this record the stage
being set for that. I think the reason why you
rightly say it might be the most anticipated record of
the year so far is it to me seems like
a kind of like a new frontier for hardcore itself.
Where's how big can hardcore get? And some outlets have
already made the claim of just how big it is
and how big it's going to be. And I suspect
we don't need to, you know, make any platters used
like that here, but it is the things like could
a hardcore band become an arena band? Is that possible?
Speaker 2: What does that look like?
Speaker 3: And going into this record, you go, well, if it's
gonna happen, it's gonna happen now.
Speaker 2: I mean, for me, like the Ghost album Ghost, you know,
were massive. We actually said this was like the comfortable
Ghost album where they've they've kind of crested that heel
now and they're glow on. Was the kind of like
breaking the door down and sort of being like, turns
out are a big band now they've gone from playing
clubs on one album to you know, and now this
this felt like the kind of one that's going to
take them to sort of like be the biggest stars.
You know. Charlie XCX branded it Turnstile Summer like this
is oh, like the this is turns about to become
a global phenomenon and go so far beyond the confines
of what a hardcore band feasibly should be able to do.
And again, is it possible to be a hardcore band
and play and headline a big outdoor festival and arena
whatever you want to do it? Like do you betray
being a hardbare when you get to that stage? How?
And like when you're writing big music course of how
much hard? So with these all kind of like questions
that were like throwing around and things that people will
kind of I guess excited, nervous, kind of like wait
with Baby Breath to sort of hear how it played out.
And you know, we have the album now, so I
guess like let's get into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's it's a weird almost like trying to
recalibrate how we think about them, because this album charted
at I think number eleven here in the UK and
number nine on the US Billboard, and I think in
our echo chamber we could almost imagine that Turnstile are
like the biggest band of the world, and partly saw
them not getting the top ten in the UK and
when oh, that's a shame, and then I remembered that's Turnstile,
Like that has to be the highest position for a
hardcore band ever, Like that is extraordinary, and Turnstile again
with the followup to glow On. I think the reason
we were particularly on ten hooks with it is, as
you're saying, they are basically uncharted territory because glow On,
more than any record arguably ever reinvented what it was
capable for a hardcore band to achieve in that kind
of arena like it. You know, it did it sonically,
but even more so I think culturally and commercially. And
the question is what did they do passing through that
kind of big hole that they themselves have created. And
it's a strange position of I think on this they've
done basically exactly what I would have imagined they would
do after glow On creatively, and yet it's been quite
surprising observing the reaction to that because, as you say, Sam,
then naturally there are debates about like whether they are
or are not a hardcore band anymore, which I think
you'd have to be like a little blind mole to
have not seen that conversation coming. More interestingly, I think
is like I said, given that this record is basically
exactly what I would have imagined a glow On follow
up to be and sound like some people who are
like absolutely all hard in on What Turnstile were not
necessarily as all in a response to this record. I
think the reaction to this will ultimately be positive in
the long run. They are a sensation, right, But it's
not been without a good bit of critique this album
and its initial release.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think because glow On was sort
of like the most immediate kind of like we're just
taking you know, pop music and hardcore. We're smashing them
together for the most immediate sort of shot of joy
you can get from a record, and everyone fucking loves it,
because how can you not love an album that is
just that, like life affirming and joyous and inventive. And
this is kind of like, okay, we've done that, how
can we develop that into hoevers and it's kind of
like being like the more patient like drawn out, not
drawn out, but like it is a more patient less
kind of like immediate like shot of like Sugar Rush album,
there is more going on here, and I think it
means it's gonna take I think it's going to take
time for people to sort of really settle in to this.
I mean again, I'm coming at from the perspective of
having just seen a healthy chunk of this album live
and again, probably good when we pressed the Outbreak review back,
because I would have spaffed my load on this album
in the live reviews. But like, I'm coming out from
this and that's why I can I've got a real
idea of how I feel about this album now. But
even then, in my position, while I was kind of like, yeah,
this is you know, it's going to take a little
bit of time to sell into this Turnstile record. I
think it's interesting and I think they've done some really
cool things, But is it like the immediate kind of like,
oh my god, this is the greatest album of the year. Yeah,
woo woo party. Was it immediately that? I guess Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think bands in this position where you're following up
a classic that's so conclusively a classic, even so quickly
it On one hand, it's a brilliant position, particularly Turnstars,
because all the stuff WI was staying around of being
uncharted territory, what can they achieve what they do and
the style of music that they were working with on
glow On, it set up so many different interesting paths
that could take. But on the other hand, when you
do the thing that's new so perfectly the first time,
it's like, would do you repeat it and risk being
compared to it forever? Or do you change more? Do
you go further away from hardcore and risk alienating those people?
I kind of when this record came out, I expected
that this was not going to have the same actress
response as glow On, because you know, it's a different
sort of landscape, different expectations. I without getting too far
into it, it never occurred to me that I didn't
think I wouldn't think this record was brilliant because every
Turnstar record up to this one has been a shoe
in for like top five of the year. NonStop Feeling
was top three time and Space number five. I think
glow On was probably neck and neck. It was one
or two for album of the year. It's only been
out for two weeks and I've not seen them live
on this record or anything like that. But I am
kind of in that camp of people who have found
this record a bit middling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I liked this record quite a lot. I think
my perspective is maybe a little different to the standard
because of where I was at with go On, which,
you know, the first thing to say is that I
love that record, and you know, what Turnstile became off
the back of it sort of culturally was so fresh
and it's just such a positive thing to have around absolutely,
But I think maybe people would actually surprised at how
little I have listened to glow On, like outside of
the like omnipresent big hitters on it in the year since,
because it's a great album, but it didn't make my
personal top twenty that year, and like I remember us
reviewing it and me saying how much I was enjoying
the record, but that I think my personal peak with
this band was like on Time and Space, that's still
the one that gets me going the most, and glow
On was obviously moving into something else, and I love
what Turnstile has become, and I love that they're doing it.
But compared to the people who, like you know, will
regularly say on our socials that glow On is like
one of their favorite albums of all time or something,
it's a different relationship, right, Like, I don't feel that
way about it. I give that record like an eight
out of ten, you know, and that makes me a
fucking madman pariah because.
Speaker 2: I merely love the record. Right.
Speaker 1: But the criticisms I have most commonly seen about this record,
I understand them completely because they're things that I feel
like I saw coming a bit on glow On. Like
the criticisms that I have commonly seen, things like downplaying
of riffs somewhat into a certain turnstyle kind of you know, formula,
the lengthy detours into pop territory, but also simultaneously sort
of pegging that combo down into a sort of like
stock turnstile sort of sound. Like I'm looking at this
album as again, a like a perfectly foreseeable continuation of
something that is clearly coming out of glow On. I
think in a way that makes me more open to
just like taking this album as it is and just
enjoying it without that kind of weight of expectation in
the same way, how are you guys feeling. I guess
Ellie you're saying you're a little bit middling on it.
Speaker 2: Sam, you love it, spacking my load over this album.
I think this album is fucking amazing. I don't think
it's just going to go on and right now. But
for me, this is this is what I wanted the
kind of the next stept from going to be. And
again I hear some of these criticisms. I hear people
sort of saying about the riffs on that, but I'm like,
I don't get it with them. The people send the
guitars are week in this album, I'm like, and there's
no hardcore and all these things, And I'm like, are
you when you're saying that no hardcore? You saying because
there's no beatdowns? Is that where you're sending the guitars
a week and there's no hardcore? Like, is that what
your kind of like tunnel vision view of hardcore is?
Because they've still so much hardcore and punk all over
this record. It's just got so much more stuff coloring it.
Like there are some criticisms which I will hear out
and I will get onto with certain songs where there
are things that I'm kind of go like, I get
why you other pem with that. Me less so, but
I'm kind of more willing to hear that. But some
of the because is about those sort of the lack
of hardcore, the lack of rifts and all that sort
of thing. I'm just like, I don't get it. I
fucking love the rifts on this album. They're not, you know,
they're not you know, the most like sledgehammer Mos rifts ever,
but they fucking pop off every time they do. And
there were just so many moments of the sulbum that
just when I'm just listening to it, I just I'm happy,
I'm just joyous. I'm singing along again. The pop elements
of this album. These choruses have been stuck in my
head for the last few weeks. I already knew every
single chorus they played live when I saw it live,
and that was a week that was like a week
after the album, and again, handing even listened to the
album made as much as I might have, but those
choruses to me, were just instantaneous, and I like never enough.
Opener It's maybe one of the weakest songs on the
album because it's kind of just like weird. I don't
agree with that like I think it is. I think
the week songs of the album I really like having.
It's a great song, but it obviously you know, it's
the low energy version of Mystery, which was such a
like perfect way to open glow On, and this is
kind of like chill via version of it. But again,
that chorus of the chorus is two words like like
that that I'd been never in the for like weeks
and weeks and weeks now, but I've just been so
just in the mo in the like the exact zone
for this album. It's been gloriously sunny and if I'm
out on a walk in the sunshine, I'm putting this
album on and I am in the kind of like
clear blue bliss of the album cover, Yeah, having the
best time.
Speaker 1: I think we all agree that it's not as good
as glow On. For what I said about the criticism
of this record, I think stem out of glow On,
and in some way you could see them coming. I
do have to make clear that you know, I think
glow On does it better, but this is, uh, it's
certainly a SOB with an affinity for the pre glow
On records. This is I think the least great Turnstile
album today. But we are talking about a record that
is sitting in this kind of unmapped territory that we're
talking about with Turnstile breaching, and there are almost like,
I don't want to say teething problems because they did
it on glow On, but almost like, you know, the
the intricacies of trying to make trade offs and balances
between the different areas that they are, like, you know,
exploring on a record like this, and even if they
don't necessarily one hundredercent nail it on every single thing,
I think there's an interesting and brave kind of element
to hearing them try and kind of balance these things,
and you know, there'd be much conversation about how this
record is maybe more naturally comparable to the sort of
melding pots of alternative music you would get on say
like Jan's Addictions albums in the nineties or even like
early Red Hot Chili Peppers or something like that, Like
more than like pure punk rock ones. It's just a
Turnstile doing that with like their flow being hardcore punk
that they're then building the top of the fact that
record is now forty five minutes long. I think is
a you know, it's a bigger ask. That is something
that seems a hardcore ish to a degree, and I
think listening with a kind of smallgas board attitude with
you know, kind of what tasty treats and surprises have
turned out got in store for me. I enjoy the
experience because it is a highly experimental album. It bizarrely
is at times sort of self derivative and also at
times very brave, and like I said, map charting is
kind of unmapped territory just to follow straight into never enough,
because you're saying it for us. When we first heard it,
we were like, oh, it is kind of like you know,
Stock Turnstile song opener. To a degree, I think they
do just work their impish magic when it comes to earworms,
because I've probably listened to that song as a standalone single,
even less than like you did, but for weeks, certainly
since I watched the Baltimore pop up concert thing they did.
Since that, I have just been doing I don't even
know the words, but the melody, just fully spontaneously singing
it for weeks, and you combine that with the kind
of the thing that turns out I've mapped out of
like this dream poppish, serene hardcore. You could say it
is lower energy mystery, but I think this leans more
into that, and I think this has an ability for
like a kind of pop hardcore on songs like that
that kind of gives, you know, turns out their edge.
And I think, you know, for as much as we're
gonna make criticisms about this album, I think it certainly
an Elliott Will Elliot, probably much more heavily. I enjoyed
this record probably a lot more than other hardcore records
we have reviewed, and we've just been like, yeah, this
is great because this has an X factor that is
particular two turnstile and at its best on this it
feels amazing. And the way that Never Enough is not
like a explosive banger single, the way that Holiday Are
even a mystery was, but it kind of glides in
this really special way, and there is something about that
when Tars are able to achieve it on an album
like this that is quite again, you can take it
whatever else they might be doing, but that element is
so special.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think like in the first four songs
in particular. I had this on the first list I've
had on ever listen since I get like euphorically happy
over those first four songs. Yeah, I think I was
so knowned about that band's ripping turnstyle off. It's one
of the things which I find so off putting in bands,
and where it's when it's really obvious which modern band
you're looking to and going Okay, we'll do that. And
Turnstile are so distinct in their combination of things that
it's just blatant when someone tries.
Speaker 2: To do it.
Speaker 3: And those first four songs are like other bands in
theory could put this together. But it's like you say,
that X factor is just it's the pixie dust which
makes all the difference, like the production of it, the performances,
that there's something about it. Even though it is often
quite kind of low key and chilled out, and even
when it's kind of going hard this record it's going
less hard than Turnstar Records previously, it does just have
this I mean, it's like it's its own energy source
or something. It's just this light kind of shines out
of it. And when this record hits its peaks and
it does have a few. I'm not gonna say it's
as high as the peaks on every other Turnstar record,
but it's to the standard that I was hoping for
this record. And first four songs, title track, Soul, Eye Care,
and Dreaming as a run, I was just like, oh
my god, they've fucking done it. And it's exactly what
you're saying. It's just the Turnstile thing is. When they
let it off, it just irrepressible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I agree that those Firth four songs are
such that like each one is so different, but each
one is just wonderfully kind of like comes out of
the next to represent a new part of the Turnstile
kind of pie, you know, Like Soul of those is
the hardcore song. And again we were talking about when
never enough of that as a single, and we're like,
it seems to be building to something and it's just
very gratified here and go ah, and then they're off
on that. Yeah, we'll get onto. I think I Care
maybe a bit, because theres obviously another side of this record,
but to go into Dreaming, where it feels like a
very distinct Turnstile party trick now to have like a
hardcore rhythm be inflected with something else you think about
the weird that well, like you know, electronic drum effects
or whatever you have in like a blackout on the
last album. But here where it's Dreaming, it's Turnstile Mario
party and it kind of says a lot that I
wasn't even surprised when it happened. It just felt like
a perfectly natural like, yeah, Turns are going to play
in that lane now with trumpets and marimba, and I
think there's someone from like Bad Bad not Good involved
with that record, and it's like, of course they're like,
you know, those are gonna be the circles in which
they are like hanging now and it bangs.
Speaker 2: Dreaming was when I was like everyone saying, oh, this
is just blowing, and I was like, where are the
trumpets on golow On? I know, as you've said, them
kind of inflect with it, yeah, like it's yeah, But
I was like, if your hips are not shaking when
Dreaming kicks off properly and those trumpets, I cannot, Like
you must not like music again, Like a Scarf fan
speaks like the Scarf is just so joyous, I mean
on this album, like on these first run of songs
like again like never scrip, but that the soul, I
care dreaming, run, I Am in Heaven on these sort
of songs. This is like perfect to me, there is
so much going on. That riff on soul is like
perfect sort of pop hardcore Turnstile like in the full
yelp vocal until the end of that song where you
get to the break down and he sort of brings
it in and he's and it's like going harder then,
but that's so like again really simple one word, chan't it,
but it's such an earworm. Daniel drummer on this he
is really stepped upon this album. I think he's done
his best work with Turnstile on this record of kind
of just like having a real like being able to
sit in so many different pockets and going like really
for the most he's doing like the follow hardcore punk,
fast drumming and other times where his rhythms are so
complex and so intricate and so much fun and he
kind of like really makes the album pop, where like
again the guitarist are kind of doing what you'd expect
from Turnstile, but it's all the other sort of things
they color it in with be it the kind of
like ambient interludes, the electronics, the pop vocals, the choruses,
like nothing else that's been done in hardcore. Again, even
if we're saying like you know, Exclinguis and bow On,
there are still so much in the sum I'm kind
of be like, I don't think a hardcore band would
ever dreamed of attempting even in these first four songs,
which are sort sort of four of the more immediate
songs on the record, I think it's so adventurous and
like really ambitious. Even if it's filtering it through the
turnstile sound, we know the ambition is undeniable.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you could certainly say that the pop
experiments go much further, like the glow On to some
degree started it. You could say it's like before then,
but glow On certainly established it, you know, stuff like
Underwater Boy or whatever.
Speaker 3: This.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things I remember saying about
glow On is felt some of those songs were parts
of the record more than they were actually like one
hundred percent fleshed out, owning those territories all the time,
and when they slip into I Care on this in
that opening run and it is basically just Duran Duran
have turned up. It is the most fully developed they've
gone into those territories. And that might be my favorite
song of that sort of you know mode that Turnstyle
have done today, Like they do a couple sort of
different takes on something like that on this record, but
I Care is my favorite one on it because not
only are the new wave guitars and the rhythm sections
so adept, but those like earworm, Brenda melodies right again
skipping around.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to give myself away.
Speaker 1: So firmly lodged, And I do think there's something about
that on this record that is very authentic to the
lineage of like punk rock leading into new wave in
the eighties and you know your Blondies and the Police
and so on, who basically turned you know, something that
was derived from punk rock into pop music. By embracing
those other elements, I think it would be you'd have
to be quite again Tunnel Visions to like and the
criticized Turnstile really heavily for you know, like going into
those elements of this kind of length, because I don't
think it's so simple or gimmicky as like, oh, look
we've done a synthpop song. It really feels like it's
quite thoughtfully drawing these kind of connections between like punk,
new wave, whatever, but in this sort of like twenty
twenties context and something like I Care and again when
the big roaring power chord in the chorus comes in
and it gets a bit harder, I found it pretty seamless.
Speaker 3: Actually yeah, I mean. One of the things that I
loved about Glow On and one of the reason why
my first experienced listen to that record is one of
my most vivid memories of ever listening to a new
record was when every song came in it fella, You've
got a little new trick. And the one that always
sticks my head is in don't play when the sort
of wee sports resort piano hook comes into the course,
just I've never heard, I don't know, ever heard a
rock band do that, and now it's a hardcore band
I never expected it from and Turnstile managing to keep
that up when I'm going in kind of braced for
that is super impressive. Like again I Care, basically being
a police song with a bit that sounds like like
the since almost I'm an owl city for one second
on this song and again it's like I've made that
sound bad, but it's exceptional. It's one of the best
songs I've ever written in this style, dreaming, like when
the samba bit comes in just so like buoyant and
fresh and exciting. Like again, I kind of want to
make sure this is clear at the top. The stuff.
A lot of the stuff this record introduces I'm a
huge fan of. And we'll get into the riffs later
because I do think there is some discussion to be
had there, but part of me doesn't want to give
it too much grief for that because I've really think
it picks up the slack with the lead guitars on
this record, which haven't been as much of a presence
on a Turnstile record before. And then there's stuff on
it where it's like they come together and it sounds
like Boston or like one later that almost sounds like
the Darkness. It's like I never asked for this or
expected it or presumed it, but it sounds great, like
when it when it's woven into songs this good, it
just it makes them come alive.
Speaker 1: I think light Design feels really fucking great as well,
when it kind of moves in with that like sort
of video game synth bassline, and then you get again
that like Turnstile glide they do that, know, other hardgo
Around quite do the same way. It's got the accent
from like the new wave chords and stuff, and then
Brendan sort of breezes in with that more like yearning
red show and the phone is the production there really.
Speaker 2: Makes that sound awesome.
Speaker 1: I think there's again, as a cruel thing with Turnstile
breaking so far out of the boxonically and becomings identifiable,
is that even when this album on paper goes much
further than go On into these areas, it feels a
lot more like the trick is sort of commonplace, and
it's like it's not commonplace. Really, it's only Turns Doll
who do it right. But I think maybe part of
the problem with this record that, to be clear again,
I really like this record. I'm just trying to gauge
again why it may not have been like so wholly
greeted as a smash success as glo On was, is
this record feels like it lacks spontaneity in the way
like a glow On or even I think a time
and Space did with it, experiments have spontaneity. This record
feels to me very very composed and very very like
deliberate and thought over in every sort of move it makes.
And maybe that's not so compatible with what punk is
meant to be, I suppose, and that we could say
that realized the experiments. But I think let's go to
one of the one that I think is I think
objectively true on this And I don't mean that in
terms of whether they're good or not, because Sam, you
made position clear and I largely agree. But I do
think it is objectively true that the riffs have become
diminished in their significance and in their role in the
music than what.
Speaker 2: They once were.
Speaker 1: And I think the first track on the record, where
I found my interest level kind of slipped a bit
in terms of like I've heard this before, was ironically dull,
which I don't think is too bad, but I do
think is as a placeholder Turnstile riff, isn't it, And
I think it's one of a few examples on this
where you hear the riff and it's a kind of simplified,
very basic, playing within its box version of what we
know the turnstile riffs to be and it's got the
little embellishments on that little metronyme clickie thing at the
start and stuff. And the melodies aren't bad, but I
hear him going I'm going dull and the riff is
a riff that you would It's one I think you'd
recognize as Turnstile instantaneously, but not one that you would
ever think about independently in the way you might like
a holiday or you know, a real thing or something.
And Ellie, I mean, Sam has been making incredulous faces
this whole time, Elliot, you understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what I just said.
Speaker 3: I think like this album steps up the Turnstar thing
in a number of ways, Like I would agree the drums.
I think it's his best performance. The production is fantastic.
It's hard to exactly explain what it is about the
riffs that's lacking this time. But one of the things
that's great about Turnstile on the previous records is their
rifts are so simple, where every time like you hear
real thing or again, don't play or blackout or TLC
or drop, you just want to like face palm and
go why didn't I write that I should have like,
I'm not a great it's sitting there. They seem so
obvious once you've heard them, and a lot of the
best riffs are like that. And these rifts feel a
bit like Xerox is of those where they're very simple.
They're really straightforward. They kind of do the same thing.
But my instant reaction isn't listen to that that's in
my head forever. It's just, yeah, that's the that's the
sort of thing I was enjoying before. And it's not
all of them. There are some good ones on this record.
But one thing I noticed was when I was thinking
back to Stripping and No, I really like that riff
on that song. I would humm it to myself and
then realize I was doing another song like like Birds,
the sort of four forbit in that I realized I
was just doing TLC and like, that's true on a
Dull Sunshower slow Dive, like they kind of just feel
like again, not bad riffs. They're not humiliated, not embarrassing,
but they're very they sort of come se commes out.
They feel more like placeholders than they do like moments
in the song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dull would be the one I would use as
like the clearest example of this, Like I said, Turnstile
placeholder riff is how I would sort of describe. It
doesn't feel bad, to be clear, because Turnstar riffs feel good,
but it doesn't feel like one of their exceptional ones.
Speaker 2: And I do think I'll give you dollt on that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Turnstile like mega riff game, I think has
been Record upon Record being brought more into a certain
part because you go out to non Stop Feeling and
they are like the riff band in hardcore at that
point in time, Like so much of non Stop Feelings
appeal is dinner in it and all that kind of shit,
and you know that sort of stomping, you know, hardcore
by way of Metallica or whatever, kind of bringing their
foot down on top of mountains. And this is the
production on that record, and the snare is hilarious and
the guitar is just so like like fat. I think
Record upon Record reaching a sort of critical mass here.
They'd been made tidy right, and the Turnstile riffs they
act the same, but they've been made more like contained
because they kind of are now just the sort of
foundation for them to do these other things, But it
means that the songs that are like primary riff songs
in their focus, they don't explode the way that I
think they did explode more ten years ago. And I
think that's just part of the trade off they are
making in what elements they are expanding in their music
and what elements in their music seem to be sort
of shrinking in themselves a bit.
Speaker 2: The Doll riff is what I'm going to like. Yeah,
I'm pretty sure Turns I'll probably have played that rift before.
I fucking love that riff, so I'm not going to
complain about it. And again, that song's got loads of
great little like deep in the There and Waiting for
the got loads of again catchier worm bits. But I
think there are other riffs on this album that are
that feel totally unique and new for Turnstile, but almost
gonna feel like again like, why haven't Turns I've done
that rift before? It's so simple and so genius. And again,
like I love about Turnstile rift playing, but I kind
of have like for me, it's not that the cards
have felt lessened. It kind of feels like the guitars
are exactly as much they need to be on this
record because there's just so much else and it stops
the album from being a kind of like unwieldy mess
because it's like the rifts come in at the exact
moment I want the rift to come in to perk
me up after I've kind of been like basking in
the warm glow of the sunshine. On this record, It's
it's all completely in the right place for me. And again,
like that's why, that's why I don't buy into this
idea that like that like the hardcore, there's not there's
barely any whole I think that is. It's just it's
there's so much more to go along with it, because
again it's a longer records. There's probably not a lot
less hardcore on this album than there might have been
some of the shorter Turn style records. There's an argument,
but it's just that there's there's so much more to me.
Speaker 1: I don't think any of us are making that there's
no one no other people are. Yeah, I think what
you're trying to communicate to the wrong people here.
Speaker 2: So that's part I'm making a general point, like the
discourse around this album, rather than like you too.
Speaker 1: Like I'm saying that I don't think like arguing that
how much hardcore is or is it on this record
isn't really the point really, So we'll just kind of
park that. When you were saying about like other riffs
that are like different, are you talking about slow Dive,
which is Turnstile ripping off sleep Weaf for some reason,
I don't know why that riff is sweetlyaf. I don't
I don't dislike it, to be clear, I was just like,
why it turns down sweetly?
Speaker 2: Its great? Yeah? Sure, look Out for Me is like
the riff where again, that is the one that feels
like a riff that like turns I probably should have
done that riff before, but I don't know have the
way comes out of that build up after after Sunshower,
which is you know, like as nice seconds of like
crazy hardcore energy and then ultra vibes and the buildings
that rift dropping on look Out for Me. That feels
like a new fun kind of like bouncy Turnstile. If
that is totally different, Yeah, I don't mind look Out
for Me. It's not one of my favorite songs on
the record. I think I do think the first run
on this record is stronger than the second half, which
I maybe to some degree might have felt about Glow
On as well. But I do think Glow On the
back half still has like you know, in like TLC
on the back half and stuff, so it still has
its proper like weight lar moments.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I think the criticism around this record maybe
they become more prominent into the back half. I quite
like the minute and a half of like fun speedy
hardcore on Sunshower, and then it does just go very
rainforest cafe, doesn't it with with with the flutes, And I.
Speaker 2: Think hardcore is all the thing now, like yeah.
Speaker 1: And when I was saying about this the trick becoming commonplace,
I think there is an odd predictability bizarrely, even though
they are the only bad and certainly doing it to
this degree. And again this is what I say about
the cruel kind of you know, ironic trade off of it,
but that I think when turns down, now go we're
gonna go crazy hardcore and then the second half of
the song is gonna be like Beach House or Taming
Parlor or something, which look out for me is like
a really expanded version of like here's a three minute
you know sort of rock song, and then yeah, full
indie dreamsgate for another few minutes again, the back half
of that song, the whole building you know, percussion thing.
I think it's pretty cool. It sounds neat, But I
think bizarrely, even though this has the furthest experimentation of
any Turnstile album, I think it's just the level of
sensation maybe of like moments per minute is lower because
it is much more kind of like measured and to
some degree predictable in its kind of way of deploying it.
Speaker 3: I think we're kind of arriving at what I think
is the main problem with this record, and for me,
it's devastating because it was one of my favorite things
about the last one is something that I was actually
looking forward to hearing more of, but it's proven to
be something of an issue for me. That sort of
dreamy indie pop disco ambient like what that sort of
uber of sounds that they're pulling from. I do think
it takes a bit too much of the runtime for
my money, But I also just don't think they're nearly
as good at it as they are the hardcore. And
that's fine because I understand that's not where they come
from their experiments with those sort of things. But in
the and I'm not sure if there's gonna go down
very well, but if we're going to be fair, and
I can't believe I'm gonna make this comparison, but you know,
we've talked about sleep Token and bands who people who
go like you know, and people got they're doing pop
and R and B and it's amazing, you know, Yeah,
but the people who like that stuff aren't impressed by
They go, no, they're bad at it. I wouldn't go
that far, but I listened to quite a bit of
stuff that this draws on, stuff like Animal Collective, talking heads,
you know, and some of the more hip hop ori
into stuff on a tribal quest whatever, and it's not
really near enough that standard for me to justify how
present it is here. And on the song like look
Out for Me, which I think is a cool song,
but it's a cool three minute song, and the sort
of four minutes of you know, kind of nice sounding
music that sort of trails into it's quite a cool
sensation the first time, but then on repeated listens it
gets to that point I just think like, okay, fine,
And that's after the sort of flute bit on SunShot,
which again is cool, but on the second listen, I'm
not quite as excited. And when I first listened to
this record, me and my friend were doing a like
an album listening thing on Spotify where we're listening to
it both at once, and we were kind of communicating,
going like, it's a bit too much of the the
sort of flutey disco stuff. It'll turn around, you know,
we'll see they'll balance it out. And we kept looking
at that one minute runtime on Ceiling and just going
like that is going to be storm Troopers of Death.
That is going to be a minute of Scotty and
an avalanche of riffs. And then it's more ultra laid
back ambient and it's it's not bad, like it's sound
sounds perfectly pleasant, but I do think it's a real
excitement killer. And that wasn't an issue. Want to go
on like the album was enhanced by those moments. It
didn't feel like it was having to drag them around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I generally sort of agree. I think again,
apparently like there's guests and people like Hailey Williams and
stuff are on this record, but it's it's almost like
having them listed at all feels performative because it's like
they are subsumed into the vibe of the record basically,
and I think the record does kind of like it
close to the end. I think the worst example for
me would be the final track, magic Man, which is
maybe just kind of like the most just shrug ending
to a Turnstile record that, bizarrely, again, you could have
almost you could have seen it coming that it would
end on a track like that, and it just feels
a bit sort of, you know, a bit dull. And
I think the good example of like the again, the
switching of the sides is that they when they really
see in Stars and Birds together as a single, it
makes sense, right because it feels like a good representative
what the Turnstile trick is. We got a really nice
sort of new wavy pop song and then I think
a really great little like punk rock blast in you know, Birds,
both subtly inflected with weird elements each other. I think
that those are my favorites in like the second half
of the album, the riff that comes in halfway through
Birds you mentioned, I do think that is like it
kind of sounds like vintage turnstile to some degree with
Brenda sort of the cause I wrap in like family,
I can't see it, but like that's the part, but
the the again, the ambient sort of stuff having I
think the ratio was kind of perfect and go on
and having expanded further into it here, I think the
good results of it are them going much further into
realizing songs like I Care right and full again you know,
seeing Stars as well. But maybe the trade off is
the full on, laid back passages. I agree, like I
think they're nice, even quite decent, but they're not remarkable,
And I think that's mainly main thing that was saying
much is you wanted as many moments of this hour
as possible to be remarkable rather than a little bit
yet of you know, sort of sort of middling. And
I think, thinking about this album intellectually, on the one hand,
that's that's my kind of trade offs. On the one hand,
I'm really excited and impressed by how far they're sort
of you know, their tendrils are moving into continually doing
stuff that hardcore bands are not meant to do. And
I do love having like Soul and I Care next
to each other on this record, And on the other hand,
I think it is presented in like the cleanest, tidiest,
most worked over turnstile recording and delivery method. That is,
it's not as conducive as when they're in their twenties
playing sweatbox venues to making that feel so kind of
explosive and off the cuff, and I just think that's
the that sort of the devil's bargain that's being made
with this record.
Speaker 2: I'm being silenced. I'm not allowed to talk about how
good turnstyle are. You're silent mement. But the thing is,
I do agree with the point you're making of that
devil's bargain thing ian to what we made. Like I
gave this to a friend who doesn't like rock music
and he liked it and sort of dreampop and all that,
and he was like, of all the bands of you've
social me, do this sort of thing turns on? Do
it better than most other bands? So I'm like, again,
I don't know how. I'm not an expert on the
the sort of the mid sort stuff. I gave to
a friend who likes that sort of thing, and he
was like, I understand why you're the where you've come from.
You've been like this is the band of yours and
that I would like because you're right, because they're doing
the thing, not the best at it, but it is
it's well implemented within the sort of the heavier elements. Again,
I mean seeing stars and birds to me is better
than a hell of a lot of glow on for me.
I think that is the kind of like peak of
the album that one too of kind of like going
here is like the peak of pop turnstyle and hardcore
turns are coming together for something that I just can't
stop listening to. Again, magic Man probably is a bit
of a freay closer, but I've still been going Magic
Man like every couple days because again, they the melodies,
the hooks that they just stick to me in a
way that so few bands can. I think. I think
as I do go back to people, I do agree
this album is by being so expansive and so ambitious,
has pigeonholed itself into sort of a where it can't
be explosive, which is I guess what people want from Turnstile,
which is why I think it's like a kind of
like a really hard thing to hold against them, where
they've kind of done, almost been set an impossible task
of like, you've got to be the most ambient, chill, serene, lush,
like pretty vibe bad, but you've got to be an explosive,
violent hardcore band at the same time, all at once.
How do you do that? And I'm gonna go like, well,
you can't, but I fucking love this version of it.
And that's where I've kind of landed on the album.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that it is, as we say, a
sort of I don't want to say a necessary evil,
but more like a there are trade offs that you
make when you innovate into areas that don't so naturally
and obviously come together. And I do think by and
large it works tremendously well. It worked pretty perfectly well
on Goo On, and I think an expansion of it.
I still really really like so much of what they
do here, and it is kind of thrilling to hear
these things. You know, you're hearing a record that hasn't
been made before, and I think on that alone, you know,
Turnstile deserve plenty of props. I think it's just I'm
acknowledging the reasons why people who feel this record like
much colder than I feel on it, which is largely
pretty warm. I can understand where those feelings may be
coming from, because it is a as we say, maybe
a slightly an unnatural bedfellow to a degree where it
takes it's almost like a one and fucking a million
shot that you get everything as perfectly laid out together
on a record of this sort of again duration and
everything dabbling in this area is trying to put it
together the way it does. I think I'm personally I'm
happy for this to have been the album they've made,
right Like, I think it's got some incredible summer songs
on it. I personally, I wasn't looking for Turnstile to
knock out like my you know, ten out of ten
album of the fucking decade or whatever. I was more
admiring again the kind of seeing whether the directory could
go and hope we get some jams out of it,
which as far as what I wanted from this record,
I've largely got it. But I am acknowledging that I
do think it is the weakest terms of album so far,
and I think that there are kind of demonstrable reasons
as to why I would make that case. And I
know that Sam, you are you know that those things
are much less of a factor for you and Elliott.
Those things clearly are more of a factor the position
we see Turnstile as being right now, at being kind
of like the top of the alternative mountain or whatever,
doing these massive things that draw people into harcore who
wouldn't usually be into it, whatever it may be. I
don't think that like changes or lessons because some people
don't like this record, my fondness for them or how
we talk about them, I think doesn't change in iota really.
I just think it, you know, again, academically interesting. There
are trade offs maybe to them evolving the way they have,
and I think that there is a there's a slickness
and a worldliness about Turnstile now that doesn't come with raw, gush,
non stop feeling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that that basically captures what I want
to say, because I still love Turnstile. I think the
run of three leading up to this is extraordinary. I
still love pretty much everything about them. I love the
way that they're exciting people who you wouldn't expect to
be excited about a hardcore band. And I think even
even with this record, which I'm middled by. I still
think it's like them and Code Orange are vying for
like best hardcore band of their generation, and I think
it's not particularly close behind them. Again, I've only had
a couple of weeks with this, and I'm open to
it changing because there's enough on this record which I
do think is tremendous. It's but I'd be lying if
I said I wasn't disappointed that I think this record is,
you know, maybe a six out of ten, which is
not what I was expected, which is crazy because it's
a six out of ten with moments that push ten,
which drives me nuts. But it doesn't seem possible. I
can only be honest whether I stand right now. It's frustrated.
You know, maybe in a month's time i'd have a
different view of it. Maybe in six months time I'll
have a different view of it. But yeah, I like,
like you say, it doesn't. It doesn't diminish my warmth
to Turnstyle at all. I still want I still want
them to do all those things. I still want them
to become like a fully fledged Arenaband. I'd love, you know, again,
it's crazy. I'd love to see them headline dowload or
something one day, who knows. But taking the record as
it is, it's it's not blown my skirt up the
way I've been able to align on them for previously.
Speaker 2: Sure I think the record is better than that.
Speaker 1: Just there you go, there you go. I think I
had to pretty measured the new Tails' album never Enough,
let us know what you make of it. Next up
it's the Enemies of the National Trust Malevolence, And then
you have them which which is called where.
Speaker 2: Only the truth is spoken.
Speaker 1: Nothing from the realms of like, you know, hardcore or
adjacent genre is obviously gonna feel big in the same
way that Turnstile feel big. But Malevolence, it must be said,
I think have come on some way in terms of
like truly feeling in their own right like a big
band new album. Also their fourth Wordistruth have spoken isat
today with this episode, and on that point, I think
it's it's quite impressive to take stock of. I remember
when the second Malevolence album, Self Supremacy, came out, and
in the late twenty tens, Malevolence had a dedicated fan base,
but it was like four years from their you know,
Hypie you know debut album. It felt a bit like
the mainstream had just looked over them when it came
to deciding who were the bands who are going to
be given a real shot, and they just weren't going
to be allowed to kind of be, you know, peus
much further beyond what they already had when.
Speaker 2: They broke out.
Speaker 1: I think it's quite remarkable the way that Malevolence basically
just seem to have demanded that people wake the fuck up,
because where they sit in the twenty twenties, you know,
almost a decade on from that point, is a wholly
different ballgame. And in the last couple of years I
have seen Malevolence headline the tent and then sub headline
the main stage at Bloodstock and get genuinely, without hyperbly,
some of the biggest reactions I've ever seen there. Their
upcoming tour that we spoke about earlier, Speed and Dying
Wish is like very much one of the you know,
kind of big tours of the year. Where again on
album two I saw them play the few hundred cap
Rebellion here in Manchester. Now they're doing Victoria Warehouse and
Bricks and Academy. On that tour, they there's pretty much
like an entire Malevolence industry over here now with like
their label and like their branding and you know, their
social media wind ups or whatever, like they have a presence. Sam,
you remember Malevolence in the twenty tens when they were
more like a kind of a great UK band who
weren't entirely getting their flowers.
Speaker 2: How the fuck has this changed? I mean, I'm like
I think we said on that sum the keep your
Distance EP and their grind post covid of being like
we're just gonna, you know, play all these festivals, pearly
shows and make people take notice. They're like there was
an attitude shift because like Malevolence always been fucking brilliant,
Like Rain of Suffering is still on the best metalcore
hardcore metal because of like the twenty tens, that is
fucking amazing. I love it so much, and then you know,
like Ray of Suffering No Subspremacy also really great. There
was a weird disconnect from Malevolence where hardcore, like hardcore
fans fucking loved them because they came through hardcore despite
you know, being a groove metal band that just happened
to you know, from beatdowns and wear tracksuits but like
that tracksuit element and the beatdown stuff meant metal fans
and metalcore fans, you know, people who were liking Buryed
Tomorrow while She Sleeps, bringing the Horizon, all those sort
of things, they wouldn't give them malevolence sort of another
looking and so they just kind of like were like
an underground cult band, and then they had their sort
of crossover moment. It's not been a it's been you know,
like four years essentially, like five years since that EP now,
so it's not been a short period. It's always been
about as much time as that kind of initial undergroond
period was. But it just feels like so much has
changed within that period where they are again one of
these sort of like biggest and brightest sort of shining
sort of things in u K metal. They you're right,
they their brand, the levlated like MVLTD like sort of thing,
so everywhere you go, like I've seen the level of
shots every show I go to. Now they you know,
have done so many mean versions of this upcoming album.
Like they've got such a sort of distinct presence that
everyone fucking loves them at this point. And like for
me as a fan who's been there since, not since
like day one, but since like Renaisson came out. I'm
just so happy that they've could have been like given
the time of day to actually be like, yeah, no,
we're fucking brilliant, and here they are with you know
We're only true is Spoken, which feels like this is
the most important levelents album ever, where again Melicitia's Intent
you know got them big. This feels that again, could
this be down that cements them as you know, the
the next best, like the best big thing in British metal,
where other bands have maybe slipped away in the last
couple of years. Like it's an exciting time for me
as a fan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you've got to give their props to
how they've kind of taken every chance at got Basically,
I would struggle to pick a favorite out of the
first three Malevolence albums. I think all of them have
some kind of case, but I would certainly say that
Malicious Intent is the most on record. They have felt
like a big band making big plays and seeing songs
like Unbroken Glass or Higher Place take over the live
setting and now Your Your Serpent's Chokeholds are almost like
the little treat you might get at the end as
an old school fan rather than like the main deal
you know it. I think Milicitan's intent is a bit
of a star making album. We're only trove spoken what
Malevolence did go in from their first two albums into
malicious intent, I would say, as they upped the arena
chorus game, and even though they're still you know, they're
still royalty in those circles, they felt less like a
hardcore band doing the mosh thing and more someone who
could hold their own with the architects and Parkway drives
of this world. Beyond that, I don't know how much
else you would be expecting Malevolence to sort of change
or or level up. They kind of just needed to
do a bit more of it. I suppose Elliott Malevolence
are maybe more of a Salmini band in terms of
history with them, But considering as I say, Malevolents are
now a band looking to punch with the the architects
and Parkway drives of this world. It's a blessing at
the moment to have someone aiming to do that while
wholeheartedly centering metal aggression and rifts and grooves and playing
with a proper wallop behind them, considering when the single
if It's All the Same to You came out and
we were like, this is a popular metalcore band, but
there's actually bits of fucking Mega Death in this risk
and that like raise a wire technicality of it in
the kind of context there is there must be some
kind of like relief and comfort about a Malevolentce album
and just getting that taste.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you're quite right. Malevolentce are not a
band that I've ever been like a huge fan of
a closer. They're weird, but I feel like everyone I've
turned my back, they've gotten bigger. Well I'm just not
paying attention and I come like they're doing wear Malevolence.
And then you listen to this record, it makes that's
like that whole story all the more heartwarming because you're
quite right.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: There's Mega Death, there's a Lamb of God, there's Black
Label Society, there's Slayer. It feels like for a lot
of crowbar like fucking out like you talk about like
British medical bands of their generation and the Slayer or
not the Slay, but like the kind of metal that
they're allowed to draw on a lot of medical bands
just generally it's like Slayer at the Gates. There's a
few variations in there. It doesn't necessarily feel that these
bands have a huge and broad metal diet. Malevolence just
sound like guys who love metal in all stripes, like
whether it's Judis Priest or fucking like satiric on or whatever,
like not, even if you can't hear it in the record,
that like joy, that worship of metal totally bleeds through
with the plague. So even though you know things like
groove metal that kind of beat down e hate breed hardcore,
there are two kind of wings of like that sort
of means that I'm not too hot on. Just by
injecting some real euphoric metal into the mix, it makes
a huge difference for a band of this size.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a metalcore band with actual metal in it, can
you believe it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Where the opening riff on this album, Blood of the
Leach is just a big flex of metal technicality. It's
almost like the guitar flexibility of a Silosis track or
something like. It's quite comical, which is how like it
is all over the blaze. But Malevolence always feel more
sort of cheeky and flamboyant and sort of like whipping
their tops off as they do it kind of when
they do those things. And I think it's the feel
of like Bravardo on their records that I always find
quite infectious of. It's, you know, a sort of hate breedy,
conviction and confidence, but with Pantera swagger, you know, and
like before the actual songs yeh were like getting into
my head on this record first listen. You just get
that from it because it's what they always have, right,
and it makes it difficult to not get swept up
by them. I had them so in my mind as
like the again entering metalcore arena state of their kind
of career that I was almost taken off guard by
Trenches coming in and just being like the most total
tough guy everybody looking for a handout, like one of
the most knuckle dragging songs they've ever done. Maybe, but
it's like hearing i know, like Pain of Truth with
like Blockbuster Josh Wilber production or something.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's right, it's it's Arena twenty thirteen UK
beat Down. It's so of that, like Trench just feels
that the most froback to where malevolence come from, even
to shout out the themblity that that's such a like
they would do that at you know, the Barfly when
I was seeing them when they were doing the beatdown
and in the face of death kind of just bringing
that back. It is the most like matcho tough guy swagger.
But as you said, there is so much character to
every single element of malevolence that I don't think there's
anyone with this band who kind of like shrinks away
that they're all like such a huge part of it.
I mean like just like he is so flamboyant whenever
he is like ripping out, like and they'll be bits,
they'll you know, they'll do riff and then they'll do
it again and he'll just go, like you all over it,
just having the most fun, just like messing with it.
And those are moments I'm just kind of like, how
can you not be having fun with this record? It's
so just kind of like we love metal, we love hardcore.
Let's just fucking have a big old fist swinging, violent party.
And again I'm sure it comes with no surprise. I
really love this record. Yeah, I mean like counterfeit is
real like to be in with it. It's really like
pure sort of.
Speaker 1: Slam like one note hut yeah, but it's got like
a task wheels and shit in it as flavor. But
the groove is really obnoxious. But do you think there's
a say in the playfulness on the threat board? Is
what really comes out with Malevolence even more than like
again I mentioned Silosis, who are you know of this
sort of group of bands, maybe the more technical one.
I think Bleefing Within are maybe the more kind of
like they will stick to the rudiments of what's going on.
I think Malevolence have a feel more than about like
that of just like kind of running away with their
own enjoyment, which I find quite endearing, and like the
way it often they'll just chuck out a riff at
the end of a song, sort of great Southern trend
kill style that will just like knock your socks on.
It was like the song didn't need that rift to
feel finished, but it's better that they put it in anyway,
And we mentioned that, you know, if it's all the
same to you and that kind of riff, and it
just feel like they are like excited to be playing
as many notes as possible and something like that and
getting off or just kind of sick metal licks. One
of my favorite moments on the record is halfway through Counterfeit,
just to shout from.
Speaker 2: The back of the one.
Speaker 1: Before I was just saying, like the full you know,
shred Mayhem solo comes in, and it's like a moment
of actual, like punk rock human excitement in a big
metal record, rather than the kind of cut and paste sterility.
And I think all of that stuff. Considering every time
a band makes like in their kind of realm, it
makes a leap up in terms of popularity and then
aims to make their like breakthrough record or whatever, there
are certain fears that might come in the nice. The
best thing you can say about this record is it
still primarily feels like Malevolence having the time of their
lives playing this very particular brand of sort of like
sludge hardcore inflected groove metal that they have pretty much
from day one, carved out from themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I would have like died a little
inside if album formal Levolence. They're kind of big rock
out there, their sort of big album. They start throwing
in gent riffs and like needless kind of ambient electronic
samples and and all of that sort of shit. I
think that that would have been like the middle, I
was like I give up on on music there and
there is no hope, Whereas here they're just kind of
like they've just remained true to themselves, but it just
makes them stand out so much more. Where again, like
we didn't bother a vieener, but you know that like
last Barry to our album, which again I loved until
like this album essentially like and that happened, Like it's
such a non event. Where's malevolenceing like come along and
kind of go like fucking pay attention to the ship
we're doing here, And again, males are getting kids who
would not go near crowbar to fucking like like have
a crowbar kind of like sung chorus sound of the
biggest arena sort of metal thing it can. It's huge,
but it's got that kind of like sludge metal bassis,
which again, how is that what the metal coal kids
are going for? Like there is no I've said so
many times with this thing, there's no formula to success.
Be fucking yourselves and that's what's gonna sort of work,
and it's worked. Wonders from the levolence, I.
Speaker 3: Feel like they're one of the only modern metal bands
of their size and scale and generation who have a
unique way of writing slow songs, where so many bands
in their field similar to them. He just goes, Okay,
we want to do a ballad, so Lincoln Park? Shall
we do Lincoln Park? Everyone agreed? Cool, like Lincoln Park
on three, And then you get to something like Salt
the Wound, which might be my favorite song on the record,
And it's like this huge, swaying doom ballad that occasionally
gets interrupted by Lamb of God in the Wrath era,
which like just as an idea, is so sick and
who else is doing that? Like again, it's it's one
of those things where so many similar bands they just
treat those sort of moments as placeholders and malevolence have
the the guts, the ingenuity or the whatever to go. Now,
this is where we can actually mark ourselves out where
everyone's being kind of tepid and doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very much the you know, the Higher Place
or the other side on this record, and I love
that's a part of their arsenal. I think that song,
you know, it doesn't lift me the way that like
Higher Place. Certainly doing the last one.
Speaker 2: I had place is like the best one, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And this never quite hits a real you know, like
cresting like that, but I think maybe the point is
to just not do that again because they've got one,
you know, and this kind of goes in different different routes.
And I think on that note, it's so it's established
that this record is, you know, still carries all of
the innate fun that Malevolence have. It's still very very
good at being Malevolence. If this is, as you kind
of positive Sam, you know, a more important Malevolence record,
how do you feel it's kind of what's the word,
sort of like you know, it's stacking up in terms
of like song craft and stuff like that. Do you
feel like this has those kind of slightly more over
the top moments that you would, you know, maybe expect
a record like this to kind of have.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I think there's almost like less kind
of like big chorus moments in this than the words
on Molicious Intent, which was the thing that kind of
surprised me about this, But I think what this just does,
so this kind of goes that album got that crowd
in on the Malevolent sound, and now this is kind
of like taking that considering and give them the trouble
on that sound while still throwing in you know, if
it's all the same to you, salt the wound, like
even you know, stuff like so help me go and
that we're the Gude that's one of the best ones. Yeah, yeah,
back to your Like they've still got these kind of
big chords and it just it feels like like malevolence
and again like there isn't anything new particularly to the
MALEVOLENTCE sound on this album, but I think it should
a great kind of consolidation of everything this band are
about and kind of going like we're big now we're
kind of just gonna solidify that. That's the Everyone who's
with us at this point isn't gonna get scared off.
And again it is a little bit more polished then,
you know, like rain and Suffering. It doesn't sound as
quite like it's going to like put a knife out
youre on the street and rob all of your money
and like kick your head in. It is. It is
more problems. So again it's easy to get into, but
it still to me just feels like I not Malevans
are as a long term fan. I'm not put off
by this kind of like cleaner sound to them, because
it's still doing all the things I want, but it
is going to just entice more people in because this
is just huge metal in the vein of you know,
the best parkway drive stuff of like post twenty fifteen
and all of that, And I think this album should
should really cement their place as you know, a Brickston
Upwards band, do Malevolence go to a do they follow
the suit of like Turnstile or those all those sort
of bands I have, or like hard coaches and bands
who are just serious business right now. And I think
this album it's not you know, it's not gonna like
it's not but any like, it's not good all choruses
all the time. It just it does enough that I
think like it should really cement them and kind of
like it's not gonna make them fall away. I think
from where they were on Milicians Intent, it's kind of
the main thing I think for this. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I think if I was taken aback by Anythingless record,
it's that Melissa's intent sounds more to me like an
actually sort of star making set of gang Busters songs.
I think particularly when it comes to you like melody
and choruses and stuff like that. I think this is
good at it, you know, if it's all the same
to you, so help me God, I really think heaven
shake you know, with all the big Conan moments, basically,
they're all great because they always are. And I think
that this will have you know, more hitters on it
that maybe come out more on the live set as
where which is where their songs usually go from being
like really good to just being like outstanding. But in
terms of like, holy, that's a chorus melodies, this does
feel like a not a step back, but a slightly
less memorable, absolute on ten set of songs to me
than Mliss's and tent maybe did. And it's hard because
we don't, as we've just said, we don't want Malevolence
to get the message of like okay, got it, put
a radio chorus in every song and then end up
going down the route that every metical band has gone
down and just shit all over their very delicate recipe.
Because at least with Malevolence, I can say that it
still feels spontaneous and like they are letting their kind
of like innate energy guide them rather than very cynically
laying out each song in a certain way. And I
would absolutely I would take a record that rocks and
just isn't world changing over one that's like overworked and
stale any day. In the back half there we should
mention the song in Spite, which I really like. The
riff in that song has a different almost heavy metal
texture like that kind of more of a treblely call
the MANI and Heal is really really cool. But it's
the song with the big Randy blythe vocal feature because
again this record produced by Josh Wilder. They record it
in like Dave Grohl's studio as well, like all these
weird thing that Malevolents are now doing to essentially still
just sound like Malevolence but a slightly larger version of him.
But you know, that's sick, the sort.
Speaker 2: Of that's a nice full circle moment, like because when
Malevolence were coming along, everyone was kind of like, ah,
it's like the UK's Lamb of God, kind of like
in hardcore that that was one of those things when
they'rest because of you know how much that first album grew.
There was loads of Lamb run up by the Hulks
and so it's like it's not as even to know
get Randy blithe one and he does a great owl
before he's like menacing spoken word bit, and then the
song goes really hard yeah, wicked yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the last song with Dirt from My Grave
has like a sort of thrashy machine Head riff that
is better than any on the actual machine Head album
that we just reviewed. I think, yeah, maybe if there
is a link between this and Turnstile, it's bands who
made great leaps at the start of the twenty twenties
who now have to follow that leap up again. And
I don't want this to come off that this is
like a you know, a bad time, because it is
very thoroughly a very good time. I think this is
maybe just more of a steady continuation of what Malevolence had,
that the leap may be being made with their kind
of again post COVID sort of material and in terms
of their newfound stature as like actual titans of the
UK scene, much like we were saying about it hernstyle.
I don't think this will knock them down at all either,
and I'm sure that again the very best songs of
this will sound very good in those big venues they're
playing at the end of this year. So Malevolence, let's
go on to Straight from the Path and I am
called clockworked. Straight from the Path obviously been going much
longer with more, many more albums, but we could put
them along with Malevolence as kind of general pillars of consistency.
This one is, of course different because one of the
new stories that broke while T and M was having
a week off is we knew that Straight in the
Path were going to I guess you sort of call
it a semi surprise release, because there wasn't a surprise
release where you woke up one day it was there.
It was the week before when they were playing slam Downe.
They just went, hey, we've got an album next week,
and we're chucking records of the crowd and that kind
of stuff. But when we then learn while we were
away that it was going to be the final Straight
from the Path album, and that after they've toured this album,
they're gonna be breaking up. Sam, obviously we're here primarily
to review the album, but what was your sort of
general reaction to that news.
Speaker 2: I was guided. I love Straight from the Path. You
know they've been a band since the early twenty tens,
I've been sewing on such But I was just like
for a lot of us, you know, a lot of
people came on straight from the Path around twenty thirteen.
They've been going, you know, ten years before that, like
like Tom in particular in the band, like had been
having some form straight from off. They've had like a
twenty plus year career, So I mean a lot of
people don't know is how long they've been been grinding out.
It just kind of like maybe, you know, they've just
kind of got to problems, Like we've taken straight from
the Path as far as it can go. We need
to you know, go on to do different things. So
it's kind of I was like, I was guided. I
was like, they've they've had an amazing run of it,
and particularly the last few years, I've had like real
kind of like good bit of success for a sort
of hardcore band from Long Island. So I was gonna
it was a bittersweet, but I was like, I'm ready
for one more album and one more kind of like
bout of like hardcore songs that are going to make
me bounce up and down, and I hope like as
long as there's you know, no bad blood. It's not
like Ikey Split, which wild Accountsy doesn't seem to be.
They seem to all be kind of like mutual. Then
I'm like, let's celebrate Straight from the Path going out
one last time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always think it's wild looking at their duration
as a band, because I only really got into Straight
from the Path around twenty seventeen when Good Night Alt
Right came out, and I was like a late comer,
but I thought that I was only a late cover
by a couple albums in a few years when it
turned out that again, they would have been around for
like a decade before actually landing the stray sound that
we like associate them with.
Speaker 2: Soizing Someone was where they first kind of started to
get that, and then Anonymous was like Straight from the
Path like two point zero one we recognized was really
sort of solidified.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so like nearly twenty five years or something really
good run a decade or so of basically just kind
of you know, killing it in the lane that they
operate in, that being very rhythmically gripping, highly out spoken
hardcore that doesn't actually really sound like any other hardcore
band that sounds more like Raging Its Machine is more admirable. Elliott,
I know that, you know, for example, you are a
big Ragians Machine fan. Any affinity for the sort of
like modern hardcore version.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, They're a band I've always liked, and
I think they've got some really brilliant songs. I never
really went in on a particular record, and I only
saw them live once, so I feel like I've not
really had the stray from the path like consummate experience
and one of those bands who, as much as they've
got like die hard fans, they don't seem to have
a single, like real like classic classic record that everyone
can point to, which in some sense makes them cool
because it means've got like everyone's got their own favorites.
Speaker 2: Hell of a greatest hit set.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think I saw them a download a
couple of years ago, and I noticed that I felt
like every song yeah, got a really warm reception and
they all you know, hit the spot. To be honest,
if we either weren't reviewing it or if this wasn't
the last record, I might not have bothered with a
straight from the path record. They're kind of on that
level for me where you know, depending on how the
mood was struck me, I might have, but I wasn't
itching for a new record. But I was more curious
knowing that this was going to be the last one,
because you know, it's it adds a sort of tension
to it. It's like, this is your last chance to
make a statement?
Speaker 2: What's it going to be?
Speaker 3: And as someone who hasn't heard every record, I don't
get the impression they like reinvented themselves too much this time.
But I don't think they needed to. I quite like
that on their last album they've not done like a
dissociation and like what is gonna be? Are like parting statement,
It's like, no, this is who we were, Victory Lap
ten bangers.
Speaker 2: If anything, they've condensed themselves. It's twenty nine minutes. I
did wonder.
Speaker 3: I was like, of all their records, I don't remember
any of the other feeling this, Yeah, sort of air
tight and punchy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this one feels like a particularly compact killer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this one feels really like sort of sniper precise.
And I was kind of okay, yeah, cool, like straight
from the path, like really popular band, really cool. I'll
give this listen and it is kind of impossible not
to be moved by their music. Like it is not
the most subtle or nuanced music in the world, but
who the fuck cares when that like kubrick stare jagged
like sort of disco metalcore kicks in. It just feels
fucking great. And I can see why there are people
who have this band tattooed on them, but the sensation.
Speaker 2: Is just nice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, if this wasn't the final album, we would maybe
go straight from the bath, still crushing the very identifiable
thing that they do. Not really a big shock there.
They haven't really drastically changed any particular element their sound
since they really found that sound in the kind of
early twenty tens. But I do have to say that
I think this one of all of them, is incredibly
fucking fired up, and they don't really take days off
from being at it. But I think this as a
last album is honestly it's about as like incendiary and
overflowing with righteous anger, yeah, and channeling that into like
big fuck off, stomp on your head songs as they'd
ever done, you know, And I really like straight from
the past music. I think I admire them as a band,
like even more. But I think, similar to you, Elliott,
there are maybe times whereas Trading Path and that will
come back and I would just sort of like cursory
adn knowledge and be like, yeah, cool, that's good, and
sometimes it's right, you know, and this one maybe it
is the knowledge that is the last one. I think
even more so some of the subjects of what these
songs are about and where that anger is pointed, and
how they articulate that anger, which is at their absolute best,
they are just so so good at it. It's got
me absolutely slamming. When this thing is on Kubrick'stare, it
feels like a long time ago that single was out
because I guess it's from the pre actually knowing that
when the album's going to come out world, but it
just crushes stabs you with that kind of you know,
dissonant panic chord turned into a thumper main groove, but
instead of like, I don't know. There are some bands
out there in this world, most of them probably who
would do that and it would lead into a kind
of ooh, a new metal nostalgia record, you know, it'd
be like a vended record. This the next song after
it fuck them all to hell. And it is completely
teeth gnashing and the voice cracking, feral fury in the
only way I'm writing your name is on your motherfucking Headstone.
Absolutely sublime and kind of from that moment it's like, oh,
straight from the path again.
Speaker 2: Final record.
Speaker 1: Not that we thought they would, but they are holding
absolutely nothing back in terms of just like chucking the
grenades out as they are leaping out of their helicopter
to their faith.
Speaker 3: The first five seconds of that song it almost sounds
like gorguts, like it's it's kind of like extreme metal nastiness,
and then the swing is like it's just outrageously thugged out.
And again it's the sort of thing where I think
I think the Marxist banned out from other bands in
their peer group is like the ability to sound sort
of liquid and like a band in a room, even
though like it's very like cleanly produced, like I wouldn't
surprise me there was like a big name attached to
this record or anything like that. It's not, you know,
rough and ready, but it manages to hone that like
channeling something really satisfying, and you know you exactly when
that one on your mother fucking Headstone chart every time
it comes in, just it sounds it just sounds huge,
like it just it's it is invigorating.
Speaker 2: I mean, like again that that that blast of it
that is really extreme, and I think that it is
like a slick album, but could have. They're all really
great players, like like Craig is a very good rung.
We all know this. Tom like his guitar invention always
been wicked. But it just means that none of this
ever feels sterile. But again, you saw that your mother
fucking heads someone coming in next with face the fucking
wall as like one of the hardest ways to open
a song, Like you're right tossing all the grenades saying
like just leaping out middle fingers to everyone. And again
when that whole like thing happened, they must have been kidding,
like all right, we can write a song about this.
In America, this is you know, an actual like really
important subject is you know, medical care and all that
sort of thing and and and how like is exploited.
So of course dra over the Path are gonna come
at that with the most kind of like incendiary angry
take on it. And it just sounds so violent.
Speaker 1: I think Drew's ability to like enunciate a hook in
a way that's like almost like he's kind of personally
talking it to you, but flowing with the music is
like at ats best here, you know, the sort of
the question and answer style hook of Cubrit's.
Speaker 2: Dair like you traumatized, just walk it off.
Speaker 1: It's brilliant and like my my first time hearing a
couple of these songs were seeing them live at Mystic
Festival the other week and shot Caller they had like
a whole intro tape that I assumed would be on
the record. It was very good of like a whole
sample of like your old mass murderers. You just didn't
pull the trigger and then into the fucking thing. But
like when instantaneously Drew came in.
Speaker 2: Bouncing on that, may God have mercy on you, I won't.
Speaker 1: I was hearing that song for the first time in
like a field and be like that's an earworm, that's
a hit, or that God that's six sixth sense absolute demons,
Like all of that stuff is as good as he's
ever done it on this record. Craig goes that saying
wherever band gets his services after Stray Call It quits,
will have lucked out because he has been the source
on their record for some years. Just a drummer working
on overtime the whole fucking way, just like going above
and beyond the bare minimum of it. He reminds me
in his playing style of Travis Barker, if you wanted
to knock your head off and bit of celle you
want to. But I remember watching them doing you know,
shot collar the other week and the guitarists doing the
solo in that song, and it's the most like weirdoh
Morello by way of late nineties like math hardcore, you
know thing you could imagine. It's a band of like
you know, four musicians who are all really inventive with
their particular instrument.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think, like again for a band who
often get painted as you know, just rangingainst the machine
kind of knockoff metalcore band, not knockoff, but like highly
inspired that I think the quality of their playing does
save them from just being it was being dismissed on
that level, like the quality of the songs. The quality
of the forms is like you said that the vocalist,
the amount of personality he's able to inject it. But
I do something that is quite similar to zach is
so also clearly himself, and I also I just like
when bands of this style, when they don't feel they
needs to go super like macro and vague in their
political slogan here when they can be like hyper precise
in a song or something like can I get your autograph?
As soon as I sat, I think I know what
that's going to be about. And then listening to it
and you go on your parting album, it could be
an easy thing or even a tempting thing, and maybe
a noble thing. I don't know, to go like, let's
keep this mascar. We're going to talk about the biggest
issues because it's our last chance. There's something particularly venomous
about taking that moment and go no, no, no, no
one person is the target this time. It does it
just does like raise the sort of heat just a
little bit.
Speaker 1: I was gonna leave that song until last because it
does a special mention. But ye know, as we're on it,
we all know what the fucking deal is, and it's
all well and good for people in rock music to go, hey,
we support Palestine, we support a ceasefire, or whatever you
want to say, while not addressing the elephant in the
room of the guy who's gonna go up on stage
at the Black Sabbath Tribute concert and all these other
things who signed his name on those bombs. And I
should have known it'd be Stray from the Path who
would rip off the band aide and just go I
see you, motherfucker, because that's what they do. And like
I was, like, I've seen articles about this album that
hold back and go it's a song about turning a
blind eye to a moral behavior from successful musicians. Well
maybe they'll they'll slightly point at like all we a
is that guy in turn, you know, turning a blind eye?
We're not looking for interview time with him later, right,
we can say so it's about Draymond and stray have
gone to the effort of writing the song. It's in
good faith to engage with that and pick up on
who they're actually talking about when they say backstage asking
where Disturbed at and then call him a stupefied fuck. Right,
it's not veiled. This may be the most deserved attack
on another musician on a rock record in history, and
they nail it right. The remorseless grooves Drew sounds absolutely
ice cold. Another killer hook with the maniac mebiac. There's
a world on the front line that will teach you
a lesson. And I think you make people remember that
hook right, like drill it into their heads so they're
singing it like you fucking like not like us style,
you know, like you want people to be singing the
song about that guy being a fuckhead, and you put
your name on that bomb. I put a target on
your fucking back. That's what it's fucking about, not as
you're saying, you know generic.
Speaker 2: Hey, we're the.
Speaker 1: Generation that's once we're gonna stand up to you by
saying nothing pleasantries. Call a guy out for his endorsement
of war crimes and tell him that, no matter how
much success he has, history will remember his name as
an evil, coward, bastard. That's how you tell people what
the fuck is up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I say, stray have never been you know,
ashamed of the call out song are subliminal criminals? Had
Die Pig, which had again like the mournerk of take
out the trash leaver on the front porch step, like
in a song about band members being like diddlers, Like, yeah,
he always had a knack for this, so like them
doing it and going, you know, resume, you know, take
a global issue of this endorsement of war crimes and
turning a blind eye to it, like and again just
not being around the bush. You know they don't have to,
you know, but you know exactly what it is because
again that that you put your name on, that bomber
put on your back and on point in a banger
song where again super elastic kind of bouncy bass, which
is like really infectious and fun with a like really
cool if And again this is like what sort of
calling cards put on your final album of being like
burn every bridge, fuck them all, Like who's gonna take
a fight with a guy on your way out? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I was gonna talk about the Obviously there's two
songs with guest features from hilariously different ends of metalcore,
right because there's the title track, which I also think
that the way they use like electronic loops and stuff
for like extra hooks is very them you know, like
that that don't think don't fucking question is like you
can imagine that in bringing the Horizon hands or someone
being really cheesy but stray somehow make it like part
of the.
Speaker 2: Like it feels like that sort of been something that
was on a Stray from Path album five years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then the La the Landmarks guy comes in
and you've got to give him credit by announcing his
presence by shouting listen bastard in French, right, like that's
pretty great. And then very aptly, right after, we did
an entire special talking about Poison Well and their relationship
to metalcore, and we bizarrely spoke about how few guest
spots Jeffrey Morera has done for a hardcore singer. During
the process of us doing that special, this was announced
and here he is, and I was a bit taken
about these not actually in hardcore mode, Like I was
gearing up for him to go like full artists rendering
of me over some stray shit. But it's kruner jeff Well.
Speaker 2: I mean, Bodies in the Dark is maybe like the
most individual kind of outlier song Straight from the Path
have done.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 2: There isn't another song in their sort of catalog like
what is the Dark? It's a really like it is
textured and gradual and it's not you know, kind of
like all bounce or latitude all in your face. It's
got that kind of like slight and dust or kind
of mechano thing like Nails group to it, like yeah,
that's me. It's got that. And then you get you know,
Ghostly Jeff coming on that really kind of like quite somber,
haunting melody and it's a really cool change of pace
that again like the one like one of those in
kind of the autographers or the back of the arm
are kind of like again like cool to take to
do something different on your final album of kind of
going like again, we could just you know, deliver ten
songs of what the fans want, but we want to
you know, show that there was there was more we
could have like potentially done like or like not done,
but like so that there are other strings of the
bow that like are worth kind of like acknowledging.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like the Landmarks feature, it's well intentioned,
but I just don't think it sounds good. The Poison
the World one exactly, I just don't. It's a bad
band but anyway, but Poison the Well, on the other hand,
a good band. And having gone back to the records,
I in the midst of listening to the Special and
obviously Ravissimo to you to and Mark by the way,
but like you, Pat, I thought like, this is going
to be big, old, gnarly metalcore, sort of turn of
the millennium style. But then as soon as he came in,
I thought, oh, yeah, of course this makes way more
sense because he by coming in on this song and
in crooner mode, it allows the record to have a
flavor that they wouldn't be able to have without him,
which is like, that's the whole fucking point of a
guest feature. It's not to go, oh, here's the thing
we do and now we're going to get someone to
do it with us. It makes so much more sense
to go, here's something that we kind of can't do.
We're going to put on something that clearly inspired us
and played into our sound and draw that out in
like you know, closing record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and last albums a sign off going here's our
last thesis on electoral politics, fuck them all to help.
Our last thesis on the health insurance industry in America
is now I'm the shot caller. I want to watch
you die. And by the way, Draymond, you're pret that
is such a curtain call and it's pretty good, and
I think the best thing I can say is. I
think this record is as good as any Straight from
the Path album has been before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I said, for me, since Anonymous, they've just,
you know, every album I like them all of a
similar quality. It feels that they may be burn out
on some things when you listen to A Life and
four Chapters kind of laying out this sort of like
the Lighthouse twenty two years adrift, the last being their
logo and all that kind of like almost feeling like
they need to take a step away because of other things.
But musically, incredibly, it feels like they've just they aren't
just you know, phoning it in on the last album
they are. They're making a statement as their sort of
like I said closing.
Speaker 1: Thesis, it would be a legitimate choice as the best
Straight from the Path album, and that's pretty fucking great.
So their album Clockworked came out a few weeks ago.
Absolutely recommend that you hear it if you have not.
The last of the very contemporary hardcore bands we're gonna
talk about this time is Kaya Nashi, who released an
album called I Want to Go Home. And there's a
reason we keep coming back to talking about Kay and Ashy,
I think because there are plenty of like hardcore or
hardcore adjcent bands that we might review the once just
to kind of be like, this is what this band
do and give you the heads up on them, and
then maybe they don't do much of the kind of
anything to kind of keep you them, you know, in
your brain. Kay and Ashy are just so fucking different
that we can't help but keep coming back to them
these past couple of years.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad that we're one of the ones that
I was like, I'm really champion that, like, in like
my first year on the podcasts, are like, let's do
this album. I think it's really cool, and they've kind
of like rewarded us by still being a really interesting band.
They are like the complete antithesis to what like eving
in modern metal core is, because it's like which lanes
you go, like, like which lanes you go down? Do
you do sterile locktain core or do you do poison
the world worse? They sort of feel like there' sort
of two lanes. Someone's funnel down now, and Kay and
Ashy are kind of like that fuck all that, We're
gonna do whatever the fuck we want to do, and
you're probably gonna a lot of you're gonna hate it,
and I think it makes it so.
Speaker 3: Cool, Like yeah, I mean every time I go on
like the reviewing sites where people can like log their
reviews of records, it's always fun looking at K and
Ashley because if it's out of five, they'll lend thep
like a two point five. And what that is is
just a moment of people going five and zero over
and over again. And the negative reviews aren't going like,
oh this isn't really for me, or like I found
some bit. It's always like this band are like comically terrible,
like this is laughably disastrously a bit like you can't
get your head around how bad this band are, and
then the fives of people going like this is the
most interesting, exciting, like perplexing sound in hardcore. And I've
always liked them and I've always like kind of kept
my on it because it's one of those bands where
you never forget that you've heard them, you know, oh
it's yeah, of course it's the miss Piggy band world.
What was I thinking, Like, it's it's in your brain
for the first you hear it, and then when suddenly
last year, I think they went from just being a
lot of fun and interesting to be like, oh, hang on,
Like on the on the Three Faces of Abucy, it's like, oh,
you're actually fucking rreat Like you've made one of the
best metal hardcore EPs of the decade so far. You go,
So this band that was just listening to it of
like Morbid Curiosity are now creating great bodies of work.
Suddenly it goes from like, you know, a bit fun too,
I can't wait to see what the next full length is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We first reviewed them on the Dear Lemon House album
in twenty twenty one, and that was a real Jesus,
this is a lot kind of first impression for a
lot of us. And then I agree last year was
when they really like cemented themselves in my head as
like really want to watch because you put a couple
of EPs, but particularly the first one, the Three Faces
of Beauty. It's you know, while this band are the
most clear obvious case of well that won't be for
everyone that we may ever have all three of us. Well, like,
this thing is awesome because the sound of Kay and
Ashley is just a band so violently being themselves. They
are an incredibly experimental hardcore band just composing actually before
you add in the vocals, which come from the single
most identifiable hardcore vocalist of this generation. Like whether you
want to say it's a good thing or not, that
is true, and we just keep being drawn to their
kind of idiosyncrasy. And what I think you have at
least to say is really pure unbridled expression that I
find compelling. And this album I want to go home.
Obviously we're back at full length, so we have a
lot more room for sort of creative and no flexibility
maybe than an EP that we all fell in love
with last year did so while the top line is
again how manic in its intensity it is, and those
things that we know Kay and Ashy for. I do
have to say about Kay and Ashy and going into
a record like this, I'm still, like continually quite surprised
by their their musical dynamism.
Speaker 2: I mean just you know, you hit ploann this and
you get confusion in a car crash, which is like
a weird o prog metal intro. There is so much
they draw on where you go. There is prog, there
is hardcore, there's metalcore, there's emo, there's like splices together
in a way that it's always kind of alarming, like
this is the sound of like a nerd. This banner
just the sounded like a nervous breakdown for like forty
minutes when they're on, and it just makes them so
dynamic and interesting to listen to.
Speaker 1: Me. Yeah, I think not everything they pull from in
their music is necessarily one hundred percent for me, but
I mean, so they obvious they drawn a lot of
like emotional hardcore from really like disgusting brutal metalcore, but
then also like emo and like post hardcore and stuff
on this one. I also think prog to a big
degree as well. And I do think I mean, as
a descriptor, you'd say that, and maybe it sounds a
bit similar to like the Callistalboys, right who we put out,
you know, the review of their album last month, And
they're definitely peers, maybe spiritually similar, but I think obviously
emotionally they're very different experiences.
Speaker 2: And it's yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, I'm not trying to make it one versus the other,
but I personally prefer Kay and Ashy because while I
think they both have like a real theater kid energy,
Kay and Ashy feels like it's exercising like a well
of like real pain and torment and something really like
dark and ugly at the core of it, rather than
just sort of like the stylistic flamboyance and sort of
flipping around a lot. And I think that's a kind
of uniting thread that you get through an album like
this a bit. And while I think the Three Faces
of beaut eep like fifteen minutes was like a perfect
delivery of what they do, this is a different proposition
and rather than like the kind of heart hand grenade
in your hand explosion that the EP was, this refreshes
its own mode like an impressive amount.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I went into this wondering, how are they
going to stretch the sort of new found understanding of
how they write songs over forty five minutes, Like they've
kind of nailed it so perfectly in the fifteen minute
framework that I wondered would it be possible to scale
this thing up? And I'd kind of forgotten just how
diverse they are as a band just musically at the
things that're drawing. And it's funny because a lot of
this stuff on paper doesn't sound that crazy where you
think like it was a sort of hardcore adjacent band,
and this sounds a bit more emo than the last one.
You go, well like stop the fucking presses, like who cares.
But their sound is so sort of baffling and unsettling
and weird that when they do things that are more
maybe like traditional and straightforward, it just keeps you on
ten to hooks because you're got. I don't trust you,
like when you sound like sensors fail. I don't trust
You're just gonna sound like senses fail because at any
moment there's gonna be some sort of rug pull where
I thought, Yeah, I thought I was listening to dance
Gavin dance some like nice ugly boogly swankorn and now
suddenly I'm in hell again.
Speaker 2: And so for forty five minutes.
Speaker 3: Even though this is maybe like just breaking up, the
sort of the chemistry of the record has some of
their more chill moments. I was just stressed out the
whole time. I was just like on eggshells waiting for
it to erupt.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that their use of the kind of two
thousands of nostalgia music is interesting as well, because the
way that they're again that they have a very like
you know, intricate, ultrustic narrative storytelling where there's some kind
of you know, a story that's been going on from
record to record around this sort of character. But the
general thing that you very much pick up on from
the first time you interact with one of their records
is this sense of like teenage adolescent horror basically of
maybe a poisoned nostalgia. You know, it's like it's remembering
you know, school time and adolescence and kind of you know,
domesticity and the sort of trauma that comes with that.
And I think using that almost like the the comfort
blanket of sounds from like that era if you were
a teenager during that era, right where then you have
like the MySpace emo type choruses and stuff to tap
into and convey that horror. Even that sort of you know,
that kind of musical nostalgia is a more savly, put together,
cohesive idea and sort of employment of the trope than
just we're going to sound like senses fail for a
bit because we like that. I also think there's a
ton of corn in what they do, both in like
the thumping low end sort of like sagging ball bag
ripping that they have going on. But then when the
front man is like really going, he can go a
bit like Jonathan at his most sort of bestial when
he's doing like the Nick Knap, Paddywax and that kind
of shit. And again, rather than like the flamboyant post
hardcore theater thing, it's marrying that with a like animalistic
expression of trauma that you would associate with like early
Corn for example. You know, in a different way to
what we said about bands like Chatpyle doing there's a
sort of spiritual update of that, and this is very,
very involved in that sort of combination of elements. And
as you were saying, Sam about the intro track goes
into the first song proper, they're not part of the dark,
and it's got this like almost like actual death core
boarderline at points level of heaviness, with this sort of
vomitous torrent of like blast beats and grotesque guitar shapes
and the way that like old suicide silence or something
would feel like the auditory equivalent of like ripping bloody
stool out of a toilet, Like this has that kind
of feel to it, and my man is just ripping
himself to shreds. The highlight in that song being the
very end when he goes Tomorrow is another. But over
that like level of just like proper shriveling you up
into a ball of jelly heaviness, riffing, it's impossible to
not be, you know, compelled and moved by it in
some sense.
Speaker 2: I mean that is I'm pere out of the vocous
like just such a distinct character. And again, I know,
like it's a boring cosation to say kind of that
voes will be for everyone and they're not. But he
just I find that just so I'm just so captivate
by it because again I love even I still find
the vocals can be a bit disconcerting and unsettling sometimes,
And that's where the magic of Like Cane actually comes from.
Is that the repressed teenage horror like trauma and also
like high school bullying and shootings and all these sort
of things and all kind of elements they feed through
the narrative for these characters. And having having the vocals
who sounds like genuinely a little bit insane conveysed out
those kind of stories a lot more compellingly. And I
think again on the last album, it was a lot
it was kind of the frantic screaming the entire time.
This one, he's kind of like doing a few more
different sort of things with them, Like I assu you
remember with the Corn things that like Red Sink Yellow
Teeth has some of the really weird vocal tics and
it's kind of really fun. You go really fast and
making loads of weird noises, and it's kind of like, yeah,
that that's not a normal vocalist doing that, in the
same way you would say that about Jonathan Davis in
the sort of the debut Corn album. But there's just
loads of like interesting turns they take on this album musically, lyrically, vocally,
where it's always just like an alarming listen where you
know you've had into intro track, then that really crushing
the heavy opener, and then you get Extra Prayers, which
is just like disarmingly tranquil and again kind of disconcern
because it's so pretty that song and you're kind of going, like, so,
what's gonna ugly this up? In any second?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's almost like sort of pleany esque kind of know,
jazzy like bass tapping stuff, and when that moves into
when I Say, which I think is another really strong
tracks on this record. The vocalist he's immediately back on
ten right, there's no building up to it again, but
the guitars beneath him are this sort of like nudely
but expressive proggy post hardcore. And then when the chorus hits,
not only is it a like MySpace esque two thousands
post hardcore chorus, and not only is it actually a
really good, really good right like, it's really like it's
one of the strongest of that type of chorus I've
heard in the last few years. When it's become sort
of coming back around again, but it's still actually distinctive
to the guy's voice singing it right like, he's not
squawking it, but it's it's not like the thing I
sometimes feel where it's like, oh, like the what might
as well be senses fail has just like come on
at this point. It's still immersed within the sort of
the the particular pain of the guy who is singing it,
you know. And I will admit to being I was
already on board with the band, but I will admit
to being shocked at how good at like a melodic
post hard or chorus like that they actually prove themselves
to be on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think a lot of bands again, and I
feel like I'm doing a lot of compared within a
peer group in this show. But it keeps coming up
a lot of bands who do the like the sort
of MySpace emo thing. It does sometimes feel like they
just sort of pushed a dispenser where it's like just
comes out and it's so generic it really can be anyone.
But it's nice for them because they like that style
of music. Key and Ash have a really cool thing
where it's very obvious what they're drawing on, but it
still sounds so much like them. It sounds like that
mental brain that put together the Three Faces of Beauty
EP has now has turned their attention to doing sort
of turn of the twenty tens emo, and again it's
it's it's strange because it's one on one end, it's
one of the more normal sounds they've ever put together,
but because you're braced for something completely off the Wolves
Men's it's surprising. It's own new way. Like it's not
quite as dazzling as the other stuff they do, but
it's no less impressive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that it's a song that a
normal band could maybe hear as their potential crossover single.
Like even the way the Breakdown builds it is done
to a really skilled standard, but the kind of it's
the old place that I feel safe is not a safe,
conventional moshicle for that kind of thing. And I think
they prove very adept at that kind of techy texture
on this, which is something I don't always like, but
I think, like you, Eliot, I really like the way
it's employed within this slightly more unhinged world that they're in.
And Jamie with Anthony Green from from Circus of Iron
and say us In and some of those other bands,
that's a guy who I can't be doing with that
guy's voice at the best of times, like he is
he is too into that. That's a little ballerina you've
wheeled out to sing, You're like, but like you know,
I will say that the sort of the Saya Siny
influence on this stuff in you know, this record is
apparent and done to a high standard. There's a moment
on this that in a similar way to like you know,
I crossed the Street and that whole thing from the
last record will stick into my head for the kind
of absolute jarring violence amidst mundanity. It is the opening
lines of a song you mentioned before, the track six
This morning light brushed my teeth at him like unfolding
this like full like squawking horror story about spitting blood
into a sink and then like in the blood seeing
these things that it turning into a kind of like
psychological obsession thing over this like sickening bending corn riff.
You know, it's just brilliant, and it's not just the
kind of squawky mickey mouse thing. It's some of what
you assume to be the sort of like offwards he
says in the most upsetting way.
Speaker 2: There's one point where he.
Speaker 1: Goes lonely, and it's just the way it's almost like
gurgled out of his voice, like it's in between like
like he's doing it through fucking a flood of tears
or like you were saying before the the random like
kind of barks in places where rhythmically should it even
make sense for there to be barks, But he's like
found the ways around it. That is, that's another of
those just like you kind of have to sit there
with your mouth open as its unfold songs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like how am I meant to feel normal about this,
like that r where it's that and slower forms of Suicide,
which again that song is just like relentless despair and
then has a completely like frenzied blastbeaed sex in the middle.
Speaker 1: Of that blastbeat passage. It still made jump on my
second listen of this record, right and the last time
I heard someone that just like vocally uninhibited on what
is basically like a black Gaze riff was like ghost Bath, right,
Like it's nuts that part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like these two songs about the middle of record
is a bit I kind of go like, oh, this
is you kind of be like, we're gonna be our
most insane right now. Like well, again, when they're doing
a you know, a more straightforward breakdown towards the end
of that part, like a mosh part, it's still weird
as fucking never feel conventional. They just when they're doing
emo choruses and breakdowns and moss parts some things that
should be you know, the money sort of moment on
the song that everyone can get behind, it's still just
kind of weird and you can't like sell it to
a normal kind of metalcore fan.
Speaker 3: That's all these songs we're talking about now like Red Sink,
Yellow Teeth, Elephant in the Room, Misguided Malice. These are
like the moments of the record where because they're not
going down, the more emo and it sounds more like
conducied to what they were doing, like direlly before it
would come in. I go ah, classic Kanashi, What do
you mean classic Koanashi? This is the strangest, fucking most
nightmare and yet somehow it's on one level it's more
comforting despite being some of the most distressing, frightening music
that anyone in this field is making right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Fly on the Wall as well, they look like
yelp at the end of like every bar of the
chorus for some reason, just like erratically every time, sticking
like jump cables in your chest. It's mad but also
heartening to hear a buzzy hardcore band right who, as
well as being very far into the deep end of
the kind of violently ugly and twisted, are also clearly
massive prog nerds because a four part ending suite. They
love Cohed to say I see you Cohed and Cambria
fans they've got to be. It's like Coheed if Claudio
had dabbled with the wrong Wizard finally and was halfway
through being transformed into a frog.
Speaker 2: I mean they did that, like the last time I'm
go ended on like a three part suite as well.
Song was like now this was that you know we
were they're going to throw all because again it's a
concept album of a narrative. There are like coheath and
melodic passes like they are massive cohed fans. It's so obvious.
It's just doing the codes thing. It's everybody being like
sci fi and space families and all that. It's kind
of like, yeah, childhood trauma and misery.
Speaker 1: But there's an acoustic bit in Sanguine two that genuinely
sounds like Opeth. It's like damnation that that's that's.
Speaker 3: The thing is like, on one hand, this is the
moment of the record. You throw everything at the wall,
full prog, cod and cambria, let's really go for it.
And yet it's some of the most like restrained, tasteful,
well composed music that I've heard Kane actually do.
Speaker 2: And I love that.
Speaker 3: It's the combination of those two things. That's what makes
great progressive music is where both feels like anything can happen,
and that everything that happens makes sense. And for the
band who we open this review by going like their
sound is fucked like this band and nuts, they just like,
there's the sound is too crazy for words.
Speaker 2: This like four parts wee with.
Speaker 3: The end it's it's it's well arranged, it it's coherent,
it makes sense. It's an emotional journey which is communicative
to the listener. Again, it's like, if you can stomach
the voice and some of the like real eccentricties of
this band, there's so much to appreciate it in moments
like that.
Speaker 2: It ends on like the most emo of emo ballads
as well, and again like that for me could have
been like a bit of a flat end of the record.
But then again it's a really kind of like dramatic
ballad that builds up. I think again they're like, I'm
sure this whay you're probably gonna be like it's the
worst song on the album because there's you two. But
I think as a ballad that closes it, it's really engaging,
really involving that the song does build, you know, But
when you get to out the third verse in particular,
I think it like it hits the most emo lyrics
and melodies imaginable, which to me is just kind of like,
I'm so sort of like swept up in it, but
it never feels like a totally like whiny wet ballad.
It's dramatic and involving in a way that kind of
makes it like an interesting kind of like heartbreaking away
to end the record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I maybe get about three minutes into
it and I maybe have my fill at that point.
But the fact that like basically right up to that
moment of this record, I was like with it the
whole way. When they're you know, when they're doing the
neudlely tech stuff, I think there is a tension between
the real kind of weight in the horror of their music,
so that even when the melody is the focus, it's
not clean to a fault like most actual tech metal.
And I would say the sort of again, the sort
of the swan Corey typest that's clearly liked to some degree,
you know, became and there's just a very compelling kind
of knife edge that they exist on, and the different
sort of textures they're kind of acquiring and adding to
their arsenal, they're not subtracting from that you know, it's
it's filling it out. And there's a point in Elephant
in the Room when you can hear in real time
pretty much the band transitioning from that sort of cornish
looseness into a really like ultra tight, precise, mechanical sort
of breakdown, and they have this sort of wind up
from one of those things into the other, and it's
really fluid, and it's like the kind of moment that
you wouldn't be doing in like a pro tool setup
or something, you know. And I think in that musical
dexterity whilst crucially keeping it all grounded in their kind
of particular world and tone, which I think is actually
maybe the more difficult thing that a lot of bands
don't do when they're juggling this many elements. I think
they're one of the most impressive hardcore bands around right now.
So that band are called Kayanashi, and that record is
called I Want to Go Home, the last hardcore album
of the bunch. Today we are moving from contemporary hardcore
to a voice that is returning from the genres far
past out next week a new Dead Guy album.
Speaker 2: Can you believe it? No like?
Speaker 3: Having heard it?
Speaker 2: Still no like them?
Speaker 3: Coming back in the first place a few years ago
was surprising enough. It was one of those UNEs where
you know, not impossible, but it just felt like such
an a that I never entertain heard on.
Speaker 2: A Damnation lineup.
Speaker 3: It was always like, I think it was like decibel
something something like, oh yeah, well, like they'll be playing
off SBI it'd a Dead Guy. What This wasn't even
like entertained or like banded around. And so when the
announcement that there was gonna be new music, he was like,
this is all just a bonus. I didn't have any
expectations for this either, Like this, I almost don't mind
how good this is because it's like, oh fuck, like
new Dead Guy.
Speaker 2: Great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the record is out next Friday, the twenty seventh.
The record is called Near Death Travel Services. Dead Guy
are a cult name within the world of metallic hardcore,
but one that you should absolutely get acquainted with if
you like that music, as when it comes to the harsh,
frenetic style of metallic hardcore that you'd know from a
Converge or a botch later on and every time I
die on Normal Gene, whoever it may be, and so
the lineage goes on Dead Guy are one of the earliest,
most pivotal adopters of that kind of music, and they
are obviously that within the context of their time right,
Like they weren't making Calculating Infinity yet in nineteen ninety five.
But this is a band who absolutely changed things and
like set balls rolling when they hit the scene back
in the early to mid nineties, and they are a
band who acted as a major inspirational touchstone for all
those bands who have mentioned, as well as enduringly one
of the most hostile and antagonistic musically bands in the scene,
as captured as well as on a surrounding couple of
EPs and stuff on their one seminal album, The Immortal
Fixation on a Coworker, the imagery and logo and everything
to do with having become legendary. We covered that history
of Dead Guy when we did an album review album
Club on Fixation on a Coworker about eighteen months ago
before Damnation Festival where we all got to see them
because they play two sets there. There's a documentary called
Killing Music that I believe is on Amazon Prime of
all places that I watched, which covers that kind of
Dead Guy origin story but also then they're, you know,
recent reunion, getting the band.
Speaker 2: Back together that thing.
Speaker 1: And that said, when I got the email a little
while ago with a Dead Guy album in it, I
did have a pang of disbelief, like.
Speaker 2: A Dead Guy album, because Fixation on a.
Speaker 1: Coworker came out in nineteen ninety five, and for comparison,
Carcass or At the Gates put out their last albums
of their original runs around the same time as that,
And then they came out and put up their reunion
albums that felt like they were a really long time
coming and sort of mythical themselves. Both of those over
a decade ago now, and they have been around ever since,
having turned into like very firmly established not actually that
novel anymore accepted reunions. The gap between Carcass and At
the Gate albums is like eighteen nineteen years or something.
Speaker 2: This is thirty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is even longer wait than Francesca, if you
can believe it.
Speaker 2: This is this gap.
Speaker 3: It's only just occurse of me now. It's like four
years short of the gap between Never Say Die and Thirteen.
Speaker 2: Sucks.
Speaker 3: Think about everything we discussed, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, we just did a whole Poison the World band
special on that sort of Patreon, and we have a
you know, kind of a much heralded reunion album from them,
supposedly on the way their entire career happens in the
time between Dead Guy albums like this is one of
the bands who almost feel like they aren't meant to
have a second album. It's been so long, and yet
here we are, we have it. We all really love
Dead Guy. I think collectively they're the kind of like abrasive,
a bit unhinged hardcore that we all really like. They
have been fucking great live on the comeback. We all
had fun seeing them, so we know, at least there
they can do it. And they're still you know, they've
got the bit between their teeth there. And at the
same time, rather than being very self serious about their
like hardness or whatever, or even their legacy, they are
you know, even though they are super spiky, that's not
the kind of antagonist that the Dead Guy are. There
is a humor and a self awareness about them. Hence
an album thirty years in the making from a bunch
of guys touring in their fifties now called Near Death
Travel Services. But despite the surrealness of it existing. I
weirdly felt like I would be quite prime to basically
know what roughly to expect from a new Dead Guy
and be kind of down and open for it. I
basically imagine the energy of those recent live shows we
saw of Dead Guys still being angry and still sounded
that Dead Guy. But you know, as older men translated
onto a record, what do we think about the first
Dead Guy album in thirty years?
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, like I was kind of like, this
isn't gonna be as completely like savage and ferocious a
spectation of cal cars are like, just forget that that
don't even humor that thigu about, Like I say, think
about that lives you we saw when they were like
just they were having fun whilst being really intense and spiky,
and like, yeah, this is ripped. I think this album
is just a good time to listen to if you
like spiky, angry hardcore music. Is it you know asi
gen reinvention? Is it a legendary band kind of going
We did one cult album that completely like influenced some
of the most kind of beloved bands, and so like,
let's just have another guy and let's have fun. Doing it. Fuck, yeah,
that's exactly what this is. And I think it's a
great time. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's so refreshing going into a comeback record
by a band who have a material I absolutely love,
with no expectations at all, Like those albums you were
talking about earlier, like Carcass at the Gates, even Sad,
it was like, please be good, Please be good, Please
be good. I'll be gusted if this isn't good. This
one was like, I'll just take what you've got, like
this whole thing. Like I say, it feels like a bonus.
Speaker 2: And I think I said this.
Speaker 3: When we all said it when they played Damnation, But
there was a sort of I say, still a furious band,
still sounding feral, but just to look at the band
on stage, it looked a bit like a bunch of
dads had congregated at the street barbecue and we're about
to like peel out some pepper songs, do you know
what I mean? And somehow, while making a record that
still feels violent and pissed off and abrasive and nasty,
they've managed to kind of carry over that similar vibe
where I don't know if that's purely in my head
or if it's somewhere on the record, I was struck
by what like a good time this was. And I'm
kind of relieved because if I put on a Dead
Guy record thirty years after fixations on a coworker and
they were still that neurotic and like mentally unwell, and
you'd start to have questions, you'd go, like, guys, maybe
maybe it was better not to come back. You don't
seem very pleased. But pointing this on, I'm just listening,
I'm just like you go on boys like I'm just
I'm geared up for them the whole time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 1: Certainly it is still a very angry sounding record. Maybe
more of that anger is projected at kind of the
world around them. Maybe like there's obviously a you know,
a real fucking an inbuilt sort of fury about you know,
American society and where it's on a record like this
that you can very much tell. And I certainly think
Tim in particular sounds absolutely just like so fucking just
pissed on a record like this in a way that is,
you know, it wouldn't quite be Dead Guy if it
wasn't like that. But certainly in the feeling of the
band like plugging back in together. You can feel some
of that like, you know, sort of a I don't know,
mature spontaneity to use a sort of like like a
you know, like that sense of almost like they've completely
bypassed the era of again like pro tools and file
sharing or whatever, all this stuff, and it's just like,
what should we just get in the van again and
just sort of do what we did before? But we're
all fifty now, Yeah, I have a go?
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: And that does make for something just like very familiar
in a good way, you know, vibes and material where
you could almost imagine that despite the fact obviously the
recording and everything is like more modern professionally done than
the one from thirty years ago in the mid nineties. Musically,
you can imagine no hardcore having happened since Fixation With Coworker,
there's almost no influence from anything modern or anything post
Dead Guy. On this record is Dead Guy picking up
again with the follow up to Fixation or a Coworker.
They just happen to have aged thirty years between between
them doing it. I think that's really fun again Killed.
The first song, Kilfe is a fucking flamethrower of a writh,
And I think it's quite cool how naturally the Dead
Guy feel of Groove and Writh has translated, because it
would be tempting to maybe view Dead Guy's position on
the timeline as a sort of like halfway not fully
their thing, because it's coming out of like early nineties
hardcore and building into the extreme like accomplished Matthew chaos
that like Convert Dylan just so on are gonna do,
but that it has this like erratically violent but also
recognizably hardcore mosh rift type, that weird halfway house that
Dead Guys are existing because they are the transitionary point
that is there on these rifts, and it still sounds
thirty year later fantastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Kilfe is such a cigarette. It wastes like no time,
just sort of slamming you in the face with like
that sort of jagged, violent riffing, barbed screams like this
to me sounds like a completely free album where there's
no constraints, there's nothing, kind of like it's just as
you say, it's dudes rocking out. It's guys come again
to him and let's just crank out some rifts and
some tunes and let's throw back and not worry about
trying to fit in with any current trends. And what
you just get then is you know, Kilfe barn Burner
new best Frenzy songs are just kind of clatter out
and fuak fump all over the place, and it's just
like has one of the most Again, I fucking adore
the guitar tone on this album that just got like
raisor like just cutting, like but like crushing and thick
at the same time, kind of like how can you like, really,
why are you really thicking into this? And it just
sounds like just so nice to my ears. And again,
like it was Wed say something like that sounds nice,
but with where Milkore is hearing a milk come that
sounds like this, I was like, ah, yeah, just come on,
Like I love the sound of that, and it just
doesn't let up, you know the whole record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the way they kind of liquid flick between rhythms
but whilst really just sounding like sand paper the whole time,
like stuff like cheap tricks so harsh, and I think
if like, if you like you know Dyllinger and bands
like that who have gotten bigger since Dead Guy. You
know this is it's sort of crustier, you know, it's
a less high tech definition sort of incarnation of that
kind of thing. But riffs like the start of the
Forever People just absolutely like clatter around that should hit
right to a certain kind of pleasure spot that we
all have as appreciate as of that kind of type
of music, and the vitriol in them is still like
up there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean one of the bands, particularly in metalcore, and
maybe surprising it's not present Moore Is who get name
checks a lot, but a lot, but you quite rarely
actually hear their sound in the sound of other bands.
I think it's Black Flag, where yeah, everyone says on
much they love Black Flag, and rightly so, not that
many bands actually emulate that sound. There is so much
Black Flag.
Speaker 2: They actually covered Black Flag when we saw the damation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Black Flag always at my favorite off the sort
of that school of hard comme as unless we count
Dead Kennedy's which is its own thing discussion for another time,
and hearing that arguably more present on this record than
it is on the first one, it just feels like
the right thing for this band of this sort of vintage,
like the spoken word part at the end of barn Burner,
you can tell that's a man who listens to family
man like his knack for like intense paranoid lines is
perhaps only one everyone is like, you know, get your
eyes off my back on Fixation of a coworker. The
one on this rock that stands out is on kill
Fee when he's sort ofthing like that, like that just hiss,
like what's so funny? Like that to me like so early,
and was like, Okay, this Tim's still got it, like
there's no doubts about him having lost it.
Speaker 2: I like the end of barn Burner with that I've
been drinking too much kool aid. I've been thinking that
I've been drinking and it.
Speaker 1: Is that like, you know, sort of simmering white collar
road rage that there was on like Fixation a coworker,
but again the wonderfully named Tim Singer. You know, when
I think about dead Guy and their position in this
sort of metallic discord and hardcore landscape, I do think
about those like black Flag esque like just rants and
tirade turned into like hardcore mush.
Speaker 2: But I can't go home to a burning building, new
best friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe my favorite one that just feels
like the genuinely angriest screaming, like his head is going
to explode in the Forever people when he leans give
me a match, like the pic Your Gods Pick Your Side,
and like escalating that part into the no More Gods,
No More God tracks, and his voice is like hitting
a crack of just like pure yelling anger is great.
And like, you know, this is produced by Steve Everatt,
so you may more recently know from like the Wonder
he Is or like the Dinner Just Skateeplane for example,
But like he's the same guy who back in the
day recorded Fixation on a coworker, and everything about this
just feels like it's the same team thirty years later.
Just it It sounds like the Dead Guy documentary Looks,
which is just grizzled hardcore dudes picking their back up
and plugging back in, and I think that's basically the
best possible sort of outcome. I really like them on
barn Burner, adopting almost like a crossover thrash feel sounds
like like early corrosional conformity or something about through like
a Dead Guy filter, and I just I can imagine
like the guys in like Municipal Waste listening to this
record and being like, Ah, that track, you know, that's
that's sick. It's just that kind of vibe. And then
maybe this sort of black flag thing as well. But
in War with Strangers, something that you also don't hear
in lots of like latest styles of hardcore is some
sabbath right, like some doomy dirge like blue swing, and
that's again a really great foundation for Tim to just
launch on one of those like rages. Wax Princess at
the end has got this bit of like outlaw sort
of skip to it almost in a way that again
reminds me of some of the stuff that we're talking
about on versions from Poison the Well, and I'm pretty
sure there's like some like castanets or something in there
before just going out on like two minutes of straight
riff to end the record, and obviously, like you know,
this sort of music, like we're saying, since Dead Guy
has become a lot more elaborate in terms of like
if you are accustomed to post dylinger bands making wild
fucking musical swings second to second, and you're going like,
where's the jazz part, where's the melodic break or whatever?
Those aren't here. This is pretty much like the pure
gutsy roots of likening rhythms and oddball scrunky riffs and
stuff like that. And like, I mean, I don't know
if I would be wanting Dead Guy to come back
and start doing like singing choruses or start playing with
electronics or whatever. I think this record is fundamentally not revolutionary, right,
But if you are looking kind of the stuff that
is maybe more genre playful and unpredictable in the style
of music, this is more again like the roots of
it not. So they don't play with texture either, right,
because there is stuff like the long search for perfect Timing,
which has kind of room for like a bit of
ambience and that sort of catch your breath atmosphere. So
don't get it confused for a sick of it all
record either.
Speaker 2: It's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, I think that that's
it is. You know, you get like the Alarms, which
has like build and release of tension, and there is
still like kind of interesting deviation. It's not you know,
one note and basically is just going back to sort
of the roots of something that would become super advanced
and then just kind of like getting to have fun
doing it again. And I think that that there's just
that there's just this undeniable charm in that regard. Yeah,
you know, is this a game change hardcore released?
Speaker 3: Not?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: Is this as good as fixation on a coworker? Hard
to compare when something has proven itself so, you know,
timelessly furious and has helped to rewrite a whole subgenre.
It's going to be impossible really for this to kind
of garner the same legend. But Dead Guy, a band
you'd never assume would make a second record, have done
so after thirty years, and it sounds really authentically them
and die hard fans are likely to get a great
kick at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's maybe the luxury of being a
second record, as you'll come back where it's like you
could do the same thing again if you want to,
you do something different. You kind of leave you with
not knowing what to expect. People need to expect there
to be a second record in the first place, another
batch of songs in that style, which as much as
they did revolutionize metalcore and comes and to find it,
no one quite sounds like Dead Guy, you know, for
all the reasons we've laid out in this review, and
just to have another set of songs in that style,
in that mold you, it's impossible not to be happy
with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are two albums together, how announced for
about sixty seven minutes or something. So the first Dead
Guy album in thirty years. If you have any interest
in metallic hardcore or the associated genres, just out of respect,
really you owe it to yourself to you know, give
and to them to give this record a listen. It
helps that it's really really good as well. So the
new Dead Guy album of all things, Near Death Travel Services. Finally,
our last album we found something unrelated to hardcore to
review this month. It's just how it turned out this
month for some reason, and it makes it the most
hilarious of sore thumbs. This month. We are leaping so
amazingly far away from like two Hours of Marsh or
whatever we've just done. Even in regards to the weather,
it's out of place, but here we are. Hex Vessel
is our final album discussion today. It's called Nocturn. This
is a project that has a bit of its own
history that might need going over, but generally. This is
the follow up to Hex Vessel's twenty twenty three album
Polar Veil. Hex Vessel to Behind You is the project
of Matt McNerney, one of the most prolific and varied
artists of the last twenty five years. You may know
him as the frontman of the post punk band's Grave
Pleasures and Beast Milk. That little combined catalog there alone
represents one of my personal favorites of the twenty first century.
In black metal. He has sung for the likes of
Code and Void and DoD Heims Guard and The Death Trip.
Hex Vessel started off as his sort of psychedelic folk project,
like away from what he was doing in more overtly
metallic music, although it did begin to incorporate elements of
prog and psych rock and other styles. Elliott, I think we,
you know, we maybe had like different entry points or
whatever with hext Vessel over the years, but because you know,
their catalog is so varied, But we have both been,
you know, fans of some of that earlier Hex Vessel.
Speaker 2: Stuff, haven't we.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think I got in on No Holier
Temple was the one I came in on, and I
was just obsessed with our record, and it opened up
all sorts of things like Comus and Pentangle and sort
of sixties psychedelic folk thing like that. I would I
wouldn't have known about that world if it wasn't for
the instruction through Hex Vessel. And they are a band
who as much as I like the faults of that record,
I kind of for my fault or theirs, I'm not sure,
probably Matt mine. I kind of didn't follow for a while,
and then only a few years ago I kind of
got reinvested again. And are we on like the fourth
Hex Vessel record in six years or something mental now
like that just seems they.
Speaker 2: Have been prolific.
Speaker 1: They've been the most prolific of Matt's various projects, and
he does a lot done me and I guess you
know that the latest of that in this particular canon
is in twenty twenty three, less than two years ago,
we got an album called polar Veil, which represented a
real shakeup for Hex' Vessel because it's a band that
was already prone to you know, transformations somewhat. But when
this you know, psychedelic folk generally not that sonically heavy
project started to make black metal music. It felt very
novel and very fresh, not least because it's not really
a typical kind of black metal that sounds like just
something another band was playing. It's very atmosphe eric. Still,
it's quite primal and sort of stripped back in its
musicality in a way that you could like an in
vibe to particularly the more sort of like slow paced,
ambient leaning side of the Norwegian scene. But for one thing,
Matt was still basically entirely singing on it instead of
utilizing more black metal screen And it was remarkable how
much Hex Vessel DNA of the kinds of songs and
moods and texts this band has explored translated over that
and it was a really phenomenal uh and a piece
of evidence, I guess, of the kind of kinship that
exists between those worlds of like folk music and of
black metal, that a band like Hex Vessel could swim
so convincingly between them, and like nothing really lost in translation,
despite the entire like makeup of the band basically changing.
I think that record is absolutely fantastic. It's so unique
and identifiable, but equally a really pure encapsulation of the
kind of feeling that I love in these sort of terrains. Again,
we've gone from that. We've been in the SAM zone
for a long time these records. We're now very much
in the me zone with this. But you guys think
your work. We're decently positive about that last record, Hex
fs polar Ail that we reviewed as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think I actually liked that record
a lot more now a couple of years later. I
remember at the time thinking it was really good. I
don't think it landed in my top twenty of the year.
Speaker 2: I have to go check.
Speaker 3: But in the last few months, maybe last year, I've
gone back to that record more and more, and now
I would probably say it's my second or third favorite
Hex Fessel record. I'm really taken with it, and I
wasn't expecting another one quite so quickly, Like I didn't
know a new album was coming. And I haven't yet
exhausted Polar l because it took me a while to
really crack it. So it feels like seconds of a
delicious meal have just come along without me asking for it,
but you know, not gonna turn it away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean for me, obviously, I discribed Hex Vessel
seeing them live, knowing nothing about them and being a
bit like it's a bit too with the tree and
the forests for me, and then Prola Vail when they
kind of incorporate more of the black metal stuff within that,
I found it a lot more. I haven't gone back
to that record, I'll be honest for a good while, like,
and I probably should revisit that because I record liking it.
And then when I was like, this is clear a
companion piece me and they've just like color swapped the
album R and then there's there's slight changes to it,
I know, but it's a clear follow on, I was
kind of like, Okay, I should go back to having
a chances yet, But yeah, this kind of like more
black metal kind of version of Hexes's with that kind
of like folks stuff into timed a bit is actually
really immersive and kind of in chancing and listen, and
I'm so down for this second album it maybe even
more so. Maybe it's just because warmed to it, but
I think this album is pretty fucking great.
Speaker 1: Well, here's additional context about this album. Because I did
know there was more music coming Nocturn. Sam was already
pointed out mirroring cover art to Polar al so we're
very much in that world still, but there is.
Speaker 2: More to this.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty four, Matt was asked to do one
of those commissioned pieces for Roeburn Festival. So so other
examples of records that have like you know, originated from
such a thing performed at Roeburn include Final Light, The
Perturbator Johannahs from Cotton Luna Collaboration record. There was the
completion of the The Tryptocon Orchestral Requiem, which was released
as a live recording. This was one of those Right
and Matt and a basically expanded version of the Hex
Vessel lineup that also included editions like Alexei Kiskolar, who
was one of the guitarists in Grave Pleasures. There was
the addition of a female vocalist, Sarah from a doom
band called Sapata. There were guest appearances from the likes
of Vi Kopnick from Don Hinzguard, who again Matt had
been in in the past. It just sounded like a
bit of a mad like Hech's Vessel, plus with all
of these sort of faces maybe from other parts of
like Matt's you know, musical past and catalog as well
sort of making themselves known. One of my friends was
at the performance and he told me how cool it was. Obviously,
as a fan of all of those things, I was.
I was really interested to hear this, and my main
hope really I just like I hope that a live
recording of that show would emerge, like the Trip to
con One did. What actually then happened is they've gone
into the studio and recorded it and put it down
to tape as an actual album, and the record the
Roadburn recording is available as like a bonus on certain versions.
But what we have here in Nocturn is you know,
both the next text Vessel album and the next step
on from Polar Veil, but also a studio realization of that,
like quite elaborate, expanded hex vessel version of what was
created for the Roadburn set. So for all of these reasons,
this was like one of the albums I was most
anticipating this year and like most wanting to hear. And
it is obviously, you know, relatable to polar Ail. I
also think it is different to polar Ail in some
quite interesting ways despite living in the same musical you
know world, Because as you would imagine from kind of
its makeup. There's a lot of like added detail that
comes from all these extra elements that are in there,
and so you know, getting to grips with those things
has been the most prominent thing in my sort of
musical mind over the past couple of weeks, aside from
the fact that this record has no business being released
in the month of June when we are literally sweating, this.
Speaker 2: Is a record that I get.
Speaker 1: I think this record seeps in maybe more than it
instantaneously shows you everything it has to offer. But Sam,
you said, you know, impressions of this are pretty positive.
Speaker 2: I might be misremembering, but this feels like the most
metallic X vessel. There is a lot like the Black
Male feels even more ruped. It is heavy. He's still
doing the kind of like clean vocals, but you know,
dark and graceful. Willness has like nasty stabbing guitars, and
there's kind of like harsher textures on this that I like. Again,
I remember recording from the last album were there, but
it feels I don't know if it's more present of
it just feels bigger and more kind of like it's explosive,
but just like attention grabbing and again there's still loads
of texture, but I just I found myself, you know,
almost immediately taken in where you had this like moody
intro and then as it, Sapphires just blast you with
like real, like intense, like kind of very classic bit
of black metal. It's really cool, just the way to
start the record.
Speaker 3: I think this is probably the most explicitly sinister hex
festal record. I think they've got alms which I find
more haunting or kind of creepy like No Holier Temple
as much as it's you know, it's kind of like
a Shamannic quality, which depending on the mood during either
comes across as quite inviting or quite frightening. But the
black metal on this is so out and out where
normally the first person that comes to mind I put
on a Hexfstal record, I think like, ah, this sounds
like comus or like can or you know, even the
doors in moments and their stuff. And then when the
main riff on Sapphire Zephyr's came in, I just thought
it pantofaust like full fucking like mid nineties dark Throne,
and it's beautiful, Like I love hearing this band playing
that style, and it's exactly that thing you were saying.
Point where I remember when it kind of came up
the x vest we're going to go black metal on
their last rec and I thought, Matt mcnudy seems like
the kind of guy who would start a different band
to accommodate that, Like he wouldn't feel the need to
more on that later it will and so I And
yet it made total sense when I heard, oh, there
still feels like a Hex's Ssel record. This one kind
of pushes the envelope even further where it's not necessarily
more like metally, but it's a bit nastier. The metal
that's there is just a bit more frost bits and
a bit more kind of razor edge.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think if there's a key different,
I think, you know, you're not wrong, And I would
certainly say that. One of the things that first took
me aback is when Sapphire Zeph's kicks in, Matt actually
lets out one of his old black metal screams, right
because even with the last record of basically being a
black metal record, there wasn't any of that really and
this actually has like you know that the harshest element,
arguably for some people of black metal that was so
far left out of Hex Vessel has now been brought
in with It's still mostly singing, but there is now
actually a scream here or there on this record. But
I think if there's a key difference in how I've
sort of engaged with this two polar Ail, it comes
again from the sort of expanded setup and its origin
story is like a big you know, X fetal orchestra
roburn piece. Polar Ail is much more simple than this album,
and I think in part that's that album's strength, because
it's really like a bone cold, skeletal kind of experience,
and that real, primal, timeless purity of it really speaks
to me and kind of connected with me in a
way that despite it having this like totally different, nuanced
vocal approach, really reminded me of like the classic of
nineties black metal and how they do that. This album
is like the more sophisticated kind of you know, flip
side or expansion of it. It's much more delicately wound.
There are undoubtedly more layers, and I think as a result,
I found this like less immediate than polar Veil, but
despite the fact there are those again slightly more intense
elements like you're saying, Sam, but one that kind of
the Again, the delicacy of the craftsmanship that have gone
into like arranging and then performing and then getting it
down on tape on this record have really been so
gratifying to like peel back. And it's still like, even
as it now includes some screams and has some more
like other elements and stuff and other you know, guests
who appear and that kind of thing, it's still like
a kind of black metal that you can't trade in
for any other black metal record that we could cover
this year, right, because it's this strange combination of like
an English folk singer living in the Finnish woods doing
it over Nordic black metal.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's really odd and kind of very distinct, and it
has again the first track is like this just wonderful
piano opening on the record, which again even that is
like beyond polar Veil because that was just very almost
like four piece guitar lad you know thing the whole time,
and now this has like, oh, you know, we're starting
with this gorgeous sort of grand piano type sound and
when Matt comes in with the clean singing. He's accompanied
by the the backing vocalist, right, and they're sort of
like intertwining and harmonizing that those two do on a
lot of this record is like even more spectral somehow,
and maybe a bit more a bit more kind of
uncanny and ghostly than what was already quite spooky on
you know, polar Veil, and the ending of that song
is really fucking heavy. I do think like the guitar riffs,
they still carry that very timeless primitivism of nineties, but
like you know, you mentioned dart Throne, that sort of
primitivism that the last record had and that still very
much like connects with me. They just have a lot
more accompaniments, right, and like a more additional element, so
the pianos. There's lots of acoustic guitars across this record
that really draw back the kind of like Hex' vessel
of old, and there's a lot of this record that
almost feels like the original Hex Vessel template looping back
in on top of this like newer black Betal direction.
It's just there's a lot of like really nuanced, quite nerdy.
If you've like followed the whole catalog to this way
elements like that that are like really like and really gratifying.
Speaker 2: To hear when the when you get to that kind
of like about four minutes or so, when you get
that fully acoustic sort of folk passage coming for a
little while, and that is kind of like they are
incredible at atmosphere. I think that that is that is
like my immediate sort taper from the summary is like
the atmosphere of it. You get this sort of stab
of feedback which pierces that tranquility, and it feels kind
of like the sort of the night taking over and
you're kind of in this like pitch black like thirty
Days of Night style endless winter of like you're you're
kind of trapped in this like really bleak world for
like however long, and it kind of loves down to
like like romping here to the end. The ending of
the album feels like you've come out of the other side,
dawn has broken and like the sun is there.
Speaker 3: I think like the thing about classic black metal and
that primitive, bare bones sort of self contained quality to
it which makes it sound so timeless, is it's I've
thought that's before, but it's a similar thing to good
folk music where it feels like it kind of always
existed even though we were not. As someone says, nineties
black moil, you know what that means, but also means
that when you listen to those records, you don't go, like, ah,
the nineties because it kind of sounds eternal in a way.
And I think Polar Veil had that more for the
reasons you were saying proud about it being kind of
more cold to the bones, basic skeletal as far as
a black belt record. This one touching on that thing
you said about like the nerdy references whatever, because they've
put more stuff on it. It's more opportunity to go, oh,
that sounds like that, and that sounds like that. And
here they've combined those two things, which might make it
feel less. It's possibly less evocative than Polar Veil is
as a record, or it feels less, you know, hone
to a specific atmospheric intent or whatever. But I just
had so much funel listening to this, and like Sapphire
Zephyr's first half is all dark Throne, and then it
switched into it that sounds like Current ninety three, who
are just as capable of like terror and anxiety and
sort of blizzardy stress as any black metal band, but
it's a neo folk band, a dark and gracil willness
that riff would not sound out of place on like
a Pasage Diva record. But then it got it combines
that with like Stephen Wilson, so you get this cool
combo of the sort of turn of the eighties into
the nineties progressive rock with the most blizzard blizzardess oppressive
classic black metal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a dark and gracial wilderness. You know, he's
hailing forests, he's hailing mountains on it, but that has
this rift which is like, despite its black metally frigidness,
it's just so like soothing and pretty to me, and
it's all of the stuff that I love about, like
really pretty. I'm actually feeling a bit sensitive black metal,
you know. And then the kind of the latter part
I think you're describing with this like plinky, plunky synth
kind of underpinning that goes into like total glacial black
metal synth melody takes over and it just it sounds
like snow gradually coating a forest.
Speaker 2: It's gorgeous.
Speaker 1: But then before you have the inward landscapes, which I
think you know, uh, you know, Opeth fans would certainly
connect with it, and I think probably because they share
those similar like you know, sixty seventies comers, whatever sort
of reference points. This acoustic mid section that then lurks
into this like completely new rhythm with this like enigmatic
discordant sort of riff, and it brings in this strings
part that's very like a forest of stars e with
this very like kind of mysterious, you know, strings melody.
Speaker 2: I was kind of amaze, but when that song kicks
back in, it's really like kind of like exhilarating and
rollicking in a way that again, yeah, I kept like, heck,
this one actually like that. You know, they're they're the
folks are banned. Like this sort of opening run is
like real different, and the strings and keys they add
add so much kind of like flavoring contexture to that
kind of end passes that like really takes off again.
Darko Shuls. The chorus on that is so catchy, like
but there's like really catchy, like cool vocal hooks all
over that song, and I'm like, these things feel like
they should exist in these songs. But I notice because
I'm like sewing on Matt mcnhoney when he's doing that
vocal album kind of like that could be a Grave
Pleasures hook if you reworked it a little bit, but
it really got itself hooked into me this record, or
of course all different parts, well.
Speaker 1: The one that really goes there in terms of sort
of up tempo is spirit Masked Wolf, which yes, is
when he goes into his upper range with a bit
more like vigor and gusto. That actually does does kind
of sound like he's singing it like a Grave Pleasure songs,
like he does the kind of like oh, kind of
a nunciations and stuff in it, where if you're a
fan of his vocal lines in Grave Pleasures, you should
recognize a bit of it in that song. And then
this mid section of the record is maybe my favorite
run of songs on it, because there's that, then there's
Night's Tender Reckoning where Matt on their Socials he went
to the extent of listing exactly what early nineties My
Dying Bride demo he was inspired by writing that song,
which I absolutely applaud. The nerdiness of it was towards
the sinister if you're wondering, but that had that real,
like you know, kind of panging your funny bone on
the corner of a table, like death doom type feel
apparently composed using a particular scale described as the diurnal
scale of putrefaction a twenty four notes mirroring each.
Speaker 2: Hour after death.
Speaker 1: And it's brilliant and it sounds like it should be
played as music when you're wandering around in osury, right,
And it has lyrics describing this story of like thousands
of year old skeletons who were dug up in an
internal embrace, and the song kind of wraps you in
this like deathly blanket. And then Mother Destroyer, which interestingly
is the one song that doesn't appear on the road
Burn set, so I guess that that was the last
one written and added to this record. But I contend
of one of my favorite songs because that like ghostly
little hook of the in the heart of Avery's psalm,
there is a darkness and it feels like every note
has been chosen to be the spookiest note he could do.
Speaker 2: Really what it tucks in me as I was like
looking like spooky little nursery rhyme, that sort of hook,
but it's like catchy as a result of kind of
how simple the melodya iss but again you kind of
it sticks with you.
Speaker 3: And there's something like Concealed the Sense, which for four
minutes it's almost like turned into a kind of Woodland
radio head, which weirdly enough, is one of the more
typical hex Vessel songs on the record. And yes, it
sticks out the most because all the other stuff they
explore here, like just little things like that, like peppered
through the record moments like that. And that's that's like
a fairly long form version of It's three minutes actual,
almost like a so I was being an interlude in
the song. It it's stuff like that where I go, oh, yeah, fun,
this is a hex Festal record and listen to this
isn't its own band, And I don't know, I just
I find stuff like I think it's really smart choice,
it's really smart uh sequencing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean again, In Mother's Jory, there's like this
cascading little piano notes flickering over the last beats and
it sounds like a bit of like a jazz you know,
soundtrack or something. Concealed Descent really screams to me. The
debut hex Festil album Dawn Beerra when the folk music
was at its most like skeletal and creeping and stuff
like that really haggard violin that comes in on it.
And again I love that that sense of one was
like bits of the continuum, you know, like or like
coming through on this record. And then Unworld has this
like like stunted little juttering just like dun sort of
weird riff, and Vicottony from Dodge Time Guard appears, which
I think he's a lot more like openly pronounced on
the live version, but like he again he's done lead
vocals on a Dodd hind Guard album just now on
Black Medium Current, and there's some of that like almost
psychedelic vocal energy of that album, like those weird bits
when he would just sort of like turl upwards, you know,
like lost in the clouds somewhere. That makes an appearance
on this record, which Sam, I bet you were absolutely
ecstatic to have back.
Speaker 2: Do you know what though, because Unworld begins with if
I've just described as stupid hard to come out of
a hextsing with it literally goes. It could be a
beat down, it could be a beat down, but then
it's kind of like part of this again immersive like
wintery record, and I was like, yeah, cool, this is
like a really oppressively heavy, sort of doomy cut. And
again like I didn't call that was the guy from
DoD time Cup. I was like, that's some weird vocals
going on there. But I was kind of like, again,
it's this far in the record, Like if I was
gonna be turned off by this record, I would have
been turned off forty minutes ago, do you know what
I mean? Like, so like by this point, I'm that
deep in that I'm here for every weird turn it takes,
and it just happens to come after, you know, the
hardest ri on the record. So like best thing the
Dodheims Guard guy has done. Apparently it's not, but it
is good. It's the first time I've turned off by
him appearing. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: It's got sort of dungeon synth the outro as well,
which is genuinely really pretty. And then the last track Phoebus,
again it takes flight more than Unwold, which is like
really just again sort juttering with again this really beautiful
guitar melody and has a chorus which is like a
call and response with Matt singing and then a black
metal vocal in the back, and I think that that
is you Ho fam Moran Pazuzu, who is also in
Great Pleasures, But I think that's him appearing and being
like ah in the back and you're providing that wretch.
And I'm really beguiled by this album. I think, like
whether it's better or not than polar Ail is a
different matter because the two, despite inhabiting the same world,
they do feel like almost opposite sides of a coin
to a degree where this exhibits some different, you know, feelings,
But it is one of the most unique, really individual
in its imagination and focus musical experiences in heavy underground
music this year from one of its most kind of
of present, most accomplished and inspired artists. And on that note,
something that I could have put in the news at
the top, but I thought we're talking about many way
we might put it here. Literally still in the release
week for this Hex Vessel album right this came out
a week ago. That's got another band hesent As called
Scorpion Milk, right which, if you are a long time
Matt McNerney fan, there's an obviously there's a rhyme there
with another band name of his. He's said that he
is doing a record. They signed to Peaceville Records, and
there's an album coming out soon, basically described as being
part of that kind of Beast Milk Grave Pleasures uber
but with the again the similar name and everything, it's
going back to more like the heavier influences of like
the very early Beast Milk stuff rather than the maybe
slightly more colorful or whatever influences that have been on
the recent Grave Pleasure stuff. I am like in the
process of trying to find out because Grave Pleasures have
not been a touring band really. On Playboys, I think
they've all been very busy with you has got a Rancipezuzu, obviously,
Matt's been a lot of Hex Vesil stuff. Grave Pleasures
unfortunately have not toured very much at all on that record,
and I have been wondering to what extent will Grave
Pleasures continue to exist. Basically, I am in the process
of trying to find out whether this news means that
Grave Pleasures is like you know, on Ice for now,
or whether this is more of like parallel thing of
again going back to the earlier Beast Milk style. Influences,
while maybe great pleasures if they were to find the
time would continue on in the kind of direction they
have been going.
Speaker 2: So more on that.
Speaker 1: But there is going to be another Matt McNerney record
in Another Guy. He's closer to what he's done with
Beet Milk, like in the Autumn, I think coming later
down the road.
Speaker 2: So there's there's always more where it's come from.
Speaker 1: So there you go. The new Hex Vessel record called
Nocturn is really again one of the most like just
dynamic and fascinating works of like extreme music, underground music
that we will cover this year, So recommend you hear it.
Thank you everybody for being with us here through those records. Obviously,
if you're a hardcore fan, this was your lot. Let
us know which are your favorites, Which are the albums
there that lived up to your expectations, Which are the
ones that maybe I don't know, drop the ball or whatever,
or is it just a great old time from start finish,
from Turnstile through to Dead Guy. And obviously people who
put like some of the isn't Harker do give that
Hex special album a bash.
Speaker 2: We will be back.
Speaker 1: He'll be back here next Friday, when the hardcore Summer
does continue for a little while because Sam has of
course had outbreak in various outbreak related shows and stuff
to report about, so we want to talk about that.
Then we will be back as soon as we can
with an album club pack over on the Patreon featuring
I Will Remind You, twenty one, Pilot's Blurry Face, man
O War's Battle Hymns, Turnover, Peripheral Vision, and The Devil's Blood,
The Time of No Time Evermore. And then we've got
some really fun stuff planned for July as well. When
you know, everything keeps on moving on as it hath
been doing.
Speaker 2: So cheers everybody, see you soon. Bye bye,