Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to That's Not Metal. We
are your weekly rock and heavy music podcast. Today we
are coming at you one of our big monthly reviews
bags and last month, you know it's January. We started
off pretty well. We had actually some really sizable albums
to have really you know, big in depth talks about.
We had a couple of really good albums as well,
but I feel like looking at this month is where
stuffers really started to heat up. For twenty twenty six,
we have some caukers in this bunch from all you
know areas and shapes and spectrums. Coming up today on
this here review show on T and M, we are
going to be tackling the new albums from Converge, Silosis, Mayhem,
Worm Pony, Cryptic Shift, Halass, and Killing Pace. My name
is Parenhyesh with me to do that very thing, Sam
Dignon and Elliot Paisley I hear and for reasons that
we're about to you know, quite shortly get onto. At
the beginning of the show, I would say it's been
another pretty positive week of good news here at T
and M.
Speaker 2: I would say it's.
Speaker 3: Been outrageous, like maybe the best news of the year.
Has already happened, which so I mean I say it's
the best news of this year. It's really the best
news of next year, is what it is.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you're waiting over a year to get it.
Speaker 3: It's about as happy as I've been about something relates
to music ever in my life.
Speaker 1: Well, let's get right into that then, because you know,
last week we were celebrating some certain live you know,
band return announcements all that kind of thing. Today we're
going to continue picking up right where we left off
in that way, because Rush, who announced at the end
of last year then about that they would be inexplicably
but you know, quite welcomingly returning for a round of
live dates. Of course, the you know classic pairing of
Alex Lifson and Geddy Lee, along with a new drummer
filling in paying tribute to the departed Neil Pertz. They
were gonna be playing lot of dates. And the first
thing that we said was, oh my god, can you
imagine can you imagine if this goes further than just
a handful of North American cities they had laid out
for them there. Well, this week we got that their news,
Rush announced dates for kind of all over place. Really,
they're going to South America, They're going all sorts of places.
But as far as you know, our interest is directly involved,
it does include a return to Europe and the UK.
Quite a few UK dates as well, like not even
just the one in London or something. They've even I
think started adding you know, extra dates onto I think
they've added like a second Manchester date and this kind
of thing. Now they are playing a good handful basically
a couple weeks worth of you know, with days and
dispersed of shows here in the UK. If you are
somewhere else in you know, mainland Europe, then they I'm
sure that they are. You know, there is a show
within some kind of you know breadth to.
Speaker 2: Where you are. Elliott.
Speaker 1: When Rush announced that they were returning, RUSSI are a band,
who I mean? I think one thing I've been gratually
observing this even just talking to you know, tn M listeners,
is how much Rush have kind of seemingly become a
band that unite so many of us and just maximum
good vibes really whenever any of us talk about or
refer to Rush. But when it was announced that they'll
be coming back, particularly you were like, oh my god,
this is the thing that I would have been waiting
my entire life for, right announcing returns to the UK.
As we are doing this, you know, tickets have all
you know, they've gone on sale, all that kind of
business as a pre sale beforehand, all the usual stuff
that you would expect. I can confirm for the curious view.
I have a rush ticket. Mark has a rush ticket.
We have in fact book basically a row of six
seats for a load of our friends all in a
row to just like absolutely raise hell.
Speaker 2: At the back of the coat lib Ana.
Speaker 1: In Manchester and Elliott down down at the O two
Arena in London. You are in a similar I mean
actually quite quite fancier looking boat. Well yeah, so I
was kind of in my head going what would I
be willing to pay for a Russia? They kind of
wasn't if it sounds mad, there wasn't really a number
because I think you remember when we did the initial answer.
Speaker 2: Then coming back was going like, oh god, maybe I'll
go to New York.
Speaker 3: That would be a nice thing to do for myself,
if if, if they don't bother coming over here. But
thankfully I don't have to because and when I went
to go look for tickets, you know, getting that the
early access code or whatever, and I just saw these
four seats right in the middle of a two which
I'm basically give it away exactly where I'm sisting. So
if you, if you plan to murder me, that's where
I'll be. But seeing those come up the Abraham Lincoln
of Rush concerts. Yeah, and seeing that and then going Okay,
if I don't get these, now I'm going to miss
this chance. And I say, I keep looking at my
receipts for those tickets because it just it still hasn't
sunk in.
Speaker 2: I have a year to get used to the idea.
But yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: The idea of the Rush would ever come back is
mad the idea that I'd get to see them, if
it was even madder that I'm in the position.
Speaker 2: I honestly, I'm elated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna fly through this news pretty quick because
we have a lot of big reviews to get through,
as I'm sure that intro gave away. But this is
by far the most tops off celebratory news certainly of
this week. I know afi last week has some you know, contention,
but this is such it's gonna be so good, it's
gonna be such a good time. And officially from now
until March of next year, Rush Season is absolutely on
also returning to the UK, maybe not quite as long anticipated,
but spirit Box Actually this is I found interesting. They
are doing a UK arena headline tour and I know
that they are now based at the stage of you know,
going beyond doing their one you know London kind of
minor appearance, that kind of thing, full on five date
long arenas all roup and down the country. Spirit Box,
I guess it's only been about you know, five six
years emerged on the scene now, but full on arena
band at this point and they're playing Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean they did like they saw of Ali Pali
super quick when they were down from that at the
start of it was the start ofl line middle last year,
but like that's that was that was that was like
a singular day and that's that's super quick. So it's
not surprising that they've now gone, well, yeah, you know,
we are a big arena band. They've got a sort
of a nice support package that I think for spirit
Box fans a particularly look very appealing.
Speaker 2: Of Yeah, that's that's ginger and dying with about.
Speaker 4: Saying like like a lot of people will kind of
be like, yet you know metal fall bands with a
woman at the front, that that's that's gonna be like
there'll be a don't we really into the idea of that.
I think I think it looks very cool. I'm interesting
because like I could totally see them filling Wembley. I
think they're given their trajectory. And then you know when
they're doing the co Op in Manchester, which is huge,
that's like double the size of Wembley almost if you
had it at maximum capacity.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, I reckon they'll do it. I
reckon they'll do it because these bands are massive, like
I saw eistein Kills at that particular arena. And in
terms of who has been I know, I think it's
a very popular band as well, But in terms of
who has been more buzzy, shall we say, in the
last of years, would probably give the edge to spirit Box.
I think, you know, their generation of bad Omens and
spirit Box and sleep Token, all these bands.
Speaker 2: They're proven numbers.
Speaker 1: Draws, right, so I think they'll quite frankly, they'll they'll
smatch this.
Speaker 5: I think off the back of.
Speaker 4: That Grammy performance that we were saying was like a
really kind of good kind of mentums swing for them
as well.
Speaker 5: That would be really helpful. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think this is like, again, of the modern medical bands,
I think spirit Box is still the one we have
the kind of like the most like good will towards.
Speaker 5: So I really hope this tour, like.
Speaker 4: Does you know, we get a bunch of out of
reidates and it does kind of push them up to
giving them maybe a download headline opportunity that feels like
the sort of the next god of that, which again
it feels crazy they've reached that so quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, spirit Box with Dyeing Wish opening
this is one of you know, my handful of metal
core shows per year which I could be tempted in
attending and mentioning download there. They have added some more
bands of their lineup, including for example a Data Remember
have been added as a second stage headliner. But most
of interesting me is the fact that they have announced
the day splits and you can see where everything sits.
And I just specifically want to hone in on the
fact that on the the Avalanche stage, the Sunday goes
let live directly into Scooter. That's that's the point of
interest for download, isn't.
Speaker 4: It unbelievable vibes like get Jason up for for a
scooter guest part at some point like the logical some
of them or something ship.
Speaker 5: Like that would be so good.
Speaker 4: I do also want to hidlight think the Friday main
stage is really like strong sort back off of that
where you're getting pendulum collboy SAPs your biscuit in a
road that's you know, you're you big like rock best
party vibes.
Speaker 2: That's skipping over scene Queen po d Hollyoad at the
beginning of that run.
Speaker 4: I mean, I get it, like they do fit that run,
but I'm also like past that I had a faux
Partavelliot not realizing that Hi comes the boom was pod
and not saliva like my bad, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Like, yeah, but just let live into Scooter. I'm
so glad after those years of doing Fever three three
three finally Jason and see how a real showman does
it and how a real entertainer puts a crowded the
part of his hands. So yeah, the point of interest
for download, that's for sure. Arctangent have added final additions
onto their lineup for this year, which includes the Cardiacs
joining on the first day, also the I believe the
first ever UK appearance of the Tony Danza tap Dance Extravaganza.
So if you are deep in your kind of math, rocky,
you know, fandom hole, then I'm sure that's huge news.
And several other bands added on as well. Elliott, considering
the Cardiacs have you know, the whole, you know, long
gestation story of how their latest album came out, having
a I would imagine a fairly you know, rare prior
to this year live performance as well, that must be
a big draw for the Cardiacs fans.
Speaker 2: That's massive. That's Codex because there's such a cult band.
Speaker 3: They almost I've never even entertained the had of him
playing a festival, even if they were a regular touring band.
They just don't seem the kind. But if there is
a festival that they're going to be suited to, Yeah,
the Arc Tangents Cardiac's crossover is I'm sure pretty sizable,
so that would be the place to see them, that's
for Yeah. I'm want to say I'm stuck because I
just presume that this would be a studio project, but
from what I hear they're working on new music as well,
so Cardiacs are fully back.
Speaker 2: Baby yeah, great stuff.
Speaker 1: And if you are in that vendor ground with kind
of interest that you aren't able to specifically make it
to Art Tangent, then Primus have announced a full on,
you know, UK and European tour around their appearance at
Art Tangent, So as well as you know Art Tangent
in the Southwest in the UK, they're also playing Manchester,
Glasgow and London. You know, rare appearances for Primus there,
so again quite tempting. Damnation have added on after was
It Weekend Natcho's last week which was you know, great stuff,
they've added on a few more.
Speaker 2: Bounds as well.
Speaker 1: They've got car Bomb Male and a Ukrainian hardcore band
called Machuchka, so it continually good stuff coming out of
the Damnation camp. And if you are heavier and more
extreme than that, then you might be tempted by a
rare UK appearance from Blasphemy, who are performing at what
seems to be a little sort of black metal festival
based around the Underworld in London Stigion Invocation and it
just it's the most like just bestial war metal maniac
shit like Adori or on it. I think Archgoat have
been added to it, but blasphemy. I don't know when
the last time they would have played the UK was,
and they're basically like the I was gonna say the
Goat Band in that scene. Archgoat really a the Goat
band in that scene, but like they are, you know,
the Titans of it if you like so very you
know in cult extreme metal circles. That is a big,
you know, rare UK appearance onto album announcements. Last week
we had, of course the teasers from At the Gates
that they were going to be likely announcing their album.
Speaker 2: Very very soon.
Speaker 1: We now have the news that the app Thegates new album,
of course, the the final album featuring the vocals of
Thomas Limberg, is going to be titled The Ghost of
a Future Dead, and it's going to be out on
April the twenty fourth. And there is a single that's
been out there. I think we should probably like leave
most conversation for when the album itself comes out, but
just you know, it's another brilliant melodic death metal track
from the best band who ever played that kind of music.
So April twenty fourth is when we'll be hearing that
Applegates album one that we have summoned out of the ether.
Oh no, no, you know you Saven Special recently is fucking
a of all bads also announcing their first record in
twenty years. It's called Prang because of course it is,
and that's going to be out in May. A new
track that I will throw up to Sam to talk
about is there's also a new track out there from
the Menzingers. It's called Nobody's Heroes. No albu announcement right now,
but you would assume this is part of it. New
Menzig is pretty good, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this seems to be this usually united the Mensinger's
clans again. Everyone is like, yeah, the Menzigers are great again.
I'm not intially sure because I still really like the
last album. I mean, shit, they're working with will Yip again,
which means the production is a bit more suited to
what people.
Speaker 5: Like about the Menzingers.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, this is like, of course, I
fucking love this is one of my favorite songs at
the moment because the Menzingers being the Menzigers, but they
do just want to look like it's that mid tempo
Men that they've been doing, but we're just a bit
more kind of like behind it, I guess, which is
why I think everyone sort of welcomes this more than
the last record. But yeah, you know, big heartfelt chorus,
that second verse where like Greg is really giving it
some That's why I was like, Ah, that's the fucking
Mensingers that I love.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I think this is great.
Speaker 4: And it seems to have got people who were less
keen on the previous album back to being like, yeah,
the Mens are the best band in the world again.
Speaker 2: Did you enjoy it more than the new single from Bert?
Speaker 5: Yes, yes I did. Do you know what? I got
this one wrong pair and I got bar too wrong, Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this, this band getting big was such a mistake
and it wasn't my mistake, it was your guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's no excuses.
Speaker 5: This is.
Speaker 4: Terrible and like, you know, have your bound because this
is like Caleb, he is happy now, he's like in
the best shape he's been in all. I'm like, but
the music is god awful, like just the worst of
you kind of like pop rock, octane core, like young bloodification,
like all of the worst things going on. In alternative
music right now coming together for this Bear Tooth song.
It's really bad and I'm just like, I'm even got
the energy to defend like the good albums now because
it's just like, this is too far. This is what
it's been, a bit building too not worth the energy.
Speaker 2: M M yeah quite.
Speaker 1: There an Iron Maiden documentary that's going to be hitting
cinemas in May, which is called Burning Ambition, And my
honor first reaction to this is how much more can.
Speaker 2: We really know about Iron Made.
Speaker 1: There are some bands where the that's a documentary and
you're like, oh, yeah, that's interesting, Like you know they're
they're a maybe they're a cult band, maybe you know
the name.
Speaker 2: And not the story or whatever.
Speaker 1: The only people go to see this will be Iron
Maiden's hardcore fans and they'll fucking know everything. What more
there is to know about Iron Maiden that is two
hour or documentary perhaps could possibly show me but maybe
it'll be surprised. But if you need to know all
the Iron Maiden facts that you probably already know, then
it's out in May. The most dramatic news of the week,
I think, came from the world of hardcore. First up,
Better Lovers announcing that they have split with Greg Purchiato
as their vocalists. Both camps have come forward to clarify that,
you know, there's no falling out going on here. Perhaps
you know, creative differences have been flown around or whatever,
or just you know, the nebulous terms of wanting to
go in different directions all that kind of stuff. But
you know, they don't hate each other, so that's good.
But this is I think maybe it's a moment too.
I don't want to write off Better Lovers, you know,
the band going forward, because they have said that they
are going to you know, find a new vocalist and
then you know, work on and put out a second
album and obviously we will keep tabs on that and
hopefully it's good. But certainly, the hype around the first
couple of years of Better Lovers was centered on the
sort of supergroup element of it being the you know,
most of every time I Die fronted by the singer
of a another legendary hardcoal band who had also very
recently hung up you know, the their their their their
guitars in Dillinger and the you.
Speaker 2: Know, the the.
Speaker 1: Greg every Time I die X Factor combo was essentially
the entire cell of what Better Lovers was, and now
that that era has come to an end, maybe it's
time to, I suppose, take stock of you know how
much those first couple of years of Better Lovers really
I don't know delivered on that promise, I suppose. And
what do you think this might mean for this outfit
going forward? And how you know, I said kind of
how continually beloved or popular or whatever they might be.
Speaker 5: I mean, like that's the.
Speaker 4: Thing is like obviously when it was at the whole
every time I Dillinger thing from a from when I
got out, So that was such a like holy shit
thing that it almost gond of for me, put like
a way of expectations that I don't think I've actually
could have lived up to you because it is the
meeting of like two of the greatest bands in their
scene coming together. And again, I still love the Better
Lovers EP. I think the ALM's really good, but it
never did quite become like match up to everything. Like
if you put this against the every time My Die albums,
it would be near the bottom of the pile, like
not not.
Speaker 5: Evely not the worst.
Speaker 4: And that that that that group done but it wouldn't
be It's not up there with the best thing of
everything like that. And again same with Dylinger, like interms
of Greg's work, and the thing that was was always
kind of like good care hardcore with a with a
good Greg preacher and vocal kind of on the front
of it, but it never kind of like properly sparkled
and had that amazing X factor outside of the live environment.
I will say, like live Better Lovers with Greg were unbelievable,
as you would expect those guys playing those songs live
with that front man insane. It just I mean on record,
and I think for me why I'm not totally down
on this is I think the weakest part of Better
Lovers in terms of like the coming together the formula
was Greg. He felt like he was kind of like
I don't honestly underforming, but he never felt like you
were getting the magic that you knew Greg preachart was
capable of or like. And it was where it felt
like the biggest step down compared to what every time
my dad would do with Kieth was in the sort
of the vocals and the lyrics and the melodies and all
that sort of stuff.
Speaker 5: It was never as good, So I was kind.
Speaker 4: Of like, do you know what, I'm willing to sort
of give them a sort of like like they've had,
you know, that the supergroup moment to kind of get
the thing off the ground. If they're getting a new
vocals she was an unknown, I'm willing to sort of
going completely fresh as and see where this goes.
Speaker 5: Whether they'll be.
Speaker 4: Given that same grace by everyone who was just kind
of like wowed by the supergroup factor remains to be seen.
But I'm not like, I don't see this as sort
of like a writing off point for Better Lovers, because
I think it never actually did kind of like deliver
on what that combination.
Speaker 5: Perhaps should have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think better Lovers. Musically, there were always a
band for every time I Die fans more than Dillinger fans,
because you know, fundamentally the guys writing the music, and
you know, the instrumental players in the band, and the
feel of the band is dictated by members of it.
Every time I die more so and Greg, I don't
know to what creative degree he was, like, you know,
really involved with the direction of the records and all
of that, but you could imagine of all the projects
that Greg has been involved in since Dillinger. Right, Better
Lovers could almost be the one where he clocks In,
goes goes yeah, clocks In goes mad for a bit
and then disappears off and does some crazy solo album
or something like that. And Better Lovers. I, I mean,
I never saw Better Lovers live, and I kind of
wish that I had at some point now. But because
I know that, like everybody who's rabid about Better Lovers,
the live environment is what they actually spoke about. They
were a seven out of ten band on record, like
that's just what they were.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: The EP and the album are both pretty decent, and
neither of them really they they scratched a itch, but
they did not excel and did not go above and beyond.
And maybe that kind of you know, not a mismatch
of chemistry, but maybe just you know, two great things
that didn't necessarily produce absolute transcendental magic like people kind
of hoped it would. I suppose maybe unrealistically, you know,
didn't exactly happen together. I do think that with that
in mind, another another album with you know, a new vocalist,
wherever it be. Of course, the immediate joke is maybe
get that Keith Buckley guy in. I'm sure that he's
not that busy, because I think that's really what everyone wants,
isn't it. But you know, another album with another guy.
I don't know either. I'm sure that it could be
of similar quality to the first st Halt they part
with Greg, maybe hopefully in an ideal scenario beyond that
in terms of the public interest in it, if it's
not exceptional, right, if they come out with something that's
essentially of a similar quality to what they did with Greg,
but with a less famous guy. I don't know how
much the you know, it's the new shiny thing buzz
will continue around bet A others, but it has yet
to be seen. Maybe this gives further credence to my
hope that the Black Queen come back and do something
else that'd be lovely.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I felt finding this coming the week after about the
Black Queen return last week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm probably I'd imagine maybe the least
with better lovers out of the three of us, perhaps,
But I always really liked Every Time I Die. I
absolutely love Dylinger. I always thought it was a slightly
odd combination. I think when it first got announced, I
got swept up in that thing as well. I got thinking, yeah,
you know, songs like Milk Lizard, where that southern rock
thing is a flavor, and I kind of overruled in
my head that actually they're two bands that don't actually
have a ton in common, which maybe for me is
why it never felt like even really the sum of
its part.
Speaker 2: So it was always kind of less than that.
Speaker 3: So I think if they get someone else who's maybe
better suited to that style that they seem like, the
band themselves seem like they're very o fa or locked
in with a style of riff writing, style of song,
and if Graphas is not a natural fit for that,
then someone else's maybe I'd like it more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe, So I think of trust that that is
the direction in which it goes. And the wilder us
to come at a hardcore this week comes in the
form of Kickback, Kickback, the I think it's fair to
at this sage legendary hardcore band, French hardcore band from
sort of the mid to late nineties who returned in
one of the you know, the constant turnover hardcore bands
who go away and then come back and get books
to play, you know, big slots at dedicated hardcore festivals
because there's a new generation of people who want to
swing their fists these you know, hard mosh parts and
all that kind of stuff. Kickback returned recently and have
been playing a series of hardcore festivals. And I know
that we've not been, you know, name dropping Kickback every
single week or whatever, but I thought we should mention this,
considering we did discuss them a little bit on the
first part of our nineteen ninety seven special, when perhaps
their most iconic album, Forever War, turned up as part
of the sort of hardcore gauntlet of you know, hardcore
records from that year that we spoke about this week,
Kickback have been removed from one at least one of
maybe the sort of developer I don't know, but at
least one of the hardcore fesselals. They have been booked
to return and play, specifically Revolution Calling citing with the
you know, the organizers who again remove this from from
the bill, citing connections that have come to light between
Kickback and a bunch of let's say, unsavory stuff. And
I can be open here and say that, you know,
I don't entirely you know, I'm not entirely on top
of and entirely belonging to necessarily the ins and outs
of what every hardcore band who comes and goes have
have been into. Let's say, so, this was like a
total what the fuck is going on?
Speaker 2: From me.
Speaker 1: I've seen probably some people being like, how did you
not know this about Kickback? And I'm like, okay, I'm
just I'm just not that you know, in deep in
that scene, in that community. But Kickback essentially the thing
that I've seen spilling across the internet is again, this
is all alleged. I don't know these things. These are
just the things that are kind of being drawn out
and you know, come into light. Apparently in the most
extreme form. We're seeing them accused of essentially far right
Nazi There's a whole bunch of stuff coming out about
the members having you know, connections to far right movements
in France, including NSBN bands in France, including Peste Noir,
And I was like, I can't that Peste Noir are
a you know, an infamous figure in the sort.
Speaker 2: Of SBN scene. I didn't expect.
Speaker 1: Peste Noir to bec coming up in hardcore circles, but
there you go, and again all sorts of accusations being
thrown at members of Kickback, which has a result of
them being removed, as said, from at least one of
these festivals, and they are still booked to play plenty
of others. And I guess that this will be the
you know, the culture kind of conflict going back and
forth between how much of this continues, how much of
this is you know, evidentially true or not or whatever.
But I saw these, again, very extreme accusation flying around,
and I was like, Sam, are Kickback the inquisition of hardcore?
Is this what is happening?
Speaker 4: So, like again I was still process because again it
says it is kind of like primarily the vocalist, I
think is I don't know exactly insauts, but like might
be the only actual original member in this current iteration
of Kickback, because like the guitarist from God's Hate is
playing a kickback right now, So like like do you
know that's a that's like two extra men of like
the political spectrum right there, like so that there are
like hired hands kind of playing a kickback. So that's
one of the things. But like I was, there's like,
how do you know it's because because I didn't read
an entirely in French interview or magazine post from like
fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2: The law like all that.
Speaker 4: I was like, I just kind of got into Kickback
how many years ago when I was kind of getting
going through my night's hardcore sort of stuff, and I
was like, yeah, man, this goes hard and just never
gonna dug into.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's a lesson to me, is like do research
these bands?
Speaker 4: Do you just google everything that goes on with any
like European band at this point, because knows what's.
Speaker 5: Going on over there.
Speaker 2: At least it's not just the French black metal bands.
Speaker 4: I mean digging It's like, yeah, like the vocus of Kickback,
here's him like digging up a grave and like taking
pictures of like a corpse in the grave. And it's like, Okay,
is the dude just insane? Is he like just an
insane edge lord?
Speaker 5: Is he a Nazi? Like I've seen so many contradictings.
Speaker 4: What means like clearly he is like out there, like
I mean, yeah, he's got stuff going on. That's when
we can ever draw it. But is it like actual Nazism?
Is it he's just fucking like trying to push boundaries?
And be edge and all that, like who knows, But
I was just gonna like kick back, like we kickback
a back.
Speaker 5: Oh no, kickback are like pretty.
Speaker 4: Pretty quick one this But I guess remains to be
seen how much wide reasons they literally got announced.
Speaker 5: I think for festival today.
Speaker 4: I think tied down, which is one to try their
line up and like kickback of down in the middle
of the lineup. I was like, it's ongoing, so we'll
see how far how far this goes as to whether
like this does become a full on like yeah, the
Kickback reunion it's killed dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely fucking well.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I did not expect all the connections
that appear into, you know, areas of other things that
I've blacklists when Kickback in this, But there you go. Yeah,
I said, it remains to be seen. But hardcore stays
fucking mental normally, doesn't it. Right, Let us move on
aside from that would be a very strange way to
segue into plugging a nineteen ninety seven specials, wouldn't it.
But that's there on the patreoon if you want to
hear everything we've been going now we're gonna be finishing
that quite soon patron dot com. Slash That's no Metal
is the way to support this show and is what
has kept it alive all these years. So thank you
to everybody who goes and does that very thing. Let
us do what we're really here to do, which is
do the reviews rundown for this month, and we start,
of course with Converge and Lover is not enough from
one side of the hardcore spectrum to really another. If
there's one album this year that I think maybe all
of us would be pretty unanimously looking forward to, it's
probably a new Converge. Despite the fact that they are
well over thirty years into their career, they are quite
simply still the band. And I think that's how it
felt with this coming out, right, like not very much
disagreement or hot takes or anything, just lots of people
being like.
Speaker 2: Ah, yeah, that's the band. And I don't remember a time.
Speaker 1: We Converge weren't considered cool. But considering how you know,
complete the outside of you know themselves, who have always
kind of suck to what they would always do. Anyway,
the waves of metabic hardcore have come and gone, you know,
and the twenty twenties are now the time when that
style is cooler than it's pretty much ever been, right
and taking up a larger share of the wider zeitgeide
of heavy music. They're kind of even more the band
in that sense because in a more minor way, maybe
it's almost comparable to something like Deaftones, because it's you know,
not that Converge are suddenly playing you know, huge venues
or whatever, but a new generation of people loving the
current generation of hardcore bands. Then you know it could
come out to shows and Converge are still there as
the band who everyone points to as that's the peak
of the mountain, That's the band who cannot be beaten.
Speaker 2: It's the right of passage, cutting your teeth.
Speaker 1: In that genre that everyone wants to get into at
the moment is listening to Jane Doe and writing a
notes apopology if you don't like it. Converge are as
much the high watermark of what this more popular than
ever genre is capable of as they have ever been
in their history.
Speaker 4: I think yeah, I mean they are the kind of
like the band even points to, and you know, the
ongoing online metal core wars of true metal core force metal,
like the true medical crowd. They kind of hold it
into like everyone has to listen to Convergent. You have
to like Convergion. If you don't like Converge, your you're weak.
And they are correct and saying that people who don't
like Converge are week, but it is just, you know,
it's just put Converged on a pedestal that like they've
always kind of been on. They've always kind of been like,
as you say, regarded as that band. But it's just
like I say, it's a newer younger generation have kind
of like fully come around and embrace it, and it's
like it's funny because it's also led to like a
different like era of Converged records being kind of like
a praise like nineties Converge is maybe the coolest it's
ever been in terms of like that people.
Speaker 2: When Forever comes crushing now it's mad like that.
Speaker 4: You know, when I was getting Converged, I was like,
you know, it hames cool, but they are nowhere near
what the the peaks the band go on to do
and everyone's like, no, man, night is Converged is the
fucking shit Now it's the hardest shit, And I'm like,
it's so interesting to see how this band are. But
it's kind of like, but I was saying, like conversives,
the night is now, it's all loved. There is not
like a bad Converged record out there there. Everyone will
probably pick a different pick a different Converge record as
their favorite because everyone is just so in on this
band and everything they stand for and sort of represent.
Speaker 5: And it was gonna when.
Speaker 4: They announce a new album, it was kind of like, oh,
here we go, like everyone's on board and everyone's gonna saying,
here's a new Converged record. Now's the time to get
in and like, join us and get in on this
new Converge record.
Speaker 5: Come on, listen to the good metal core.
Speaker 3: I think like, in a way, it's even more impressive
than that, because they're in that echelon of bands now
like Napalm Death and Swan's where they've just been going
for decades, and even if you're not o FA with metalcore,
you admire Converge and it's kind of impossible not to.
And again, you know, in a weird way, it's almost
more impressive than that because those bands reinvented themselves and
changed and adapted to times, to that sort of thing Converge.
They've they've absolutely experimented and they've they've always pulled it off.
But what's fascinating to me, especially about this record is
just how straightforward and yet still brilliancies for a convergelm.
And it's like talking about bands who are thirty years
in at this point you're thinking of, you know, this
is like when Repentless came out that's the threas into
Slayer's career, or like this still by Mega Death.
Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: You think about it in those terms, and when those
records come out, you go good on them for you know,
still sticking to it. There's gonna be a couple of
songs on here that I want to hear in the
live set, a couple that I don't that will be
absolutely fine. Converge is still a bound where like you're saying,
if there's one hour of a year where we will
go looking to that to be that's gonna be some
of the best music released all year from any genre,
at any scene by anyone. That's kind of unprecedented.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it has of course been a minute since
it actually released anything. Five years since Blood Moon Part one,
the collaborative record with Chelsea Wolf Benchism and Stephen Brodsky,
obviously a very different beast to regular Converge. I will say,
if there's one thing that the newer hardcore crowd controlling
the conversation around Converge haven't gotten yet, it's blood Moon.
The amount of like tearless rankings or whatever I've seen
from new Converged fans putting fucking the halo on a
haystack on be tier. But blood Moon DETI because you
can't mosh to it. You guys don't deserve blood Moon.
If you have any sense, you will grow to it.
Trust us and you will grow to it. But prior
to that, the duskiness in twenty seventeen, nine years between
mainland you know, mainline Converge albums, and it has felt that,
you know, we've been waiting. Duskin Us phenomenal album. I
can't put it top three because they have so many
legendary releases, but it's possibly top five Converge and you're
never really sure what Converge are gonna do, and you wonder,
you know, if they had done a follow up to
the duskin Us a couple of years after that, if
it would be you know, very different to what we
have here, because as much as Blood Moon feels like
a different thing, they have described this album as something
of a push away from that, where they've done something
that was more this, you know, very collaborative, obviously slowly
flowering out, spreading. It's it's it's vines and its tendrils,
and now they have this like pent up urgency, and
you know, when they dropped the first single, they were like,
this album will be directed, it will be ravenous. This
is ten tracks in thirty one minutes, which is like
the most normal hardcore length converge album they've done basically
this century. They obviously there are flashes of you know,
ingenious experimentation and stuff like that, but it's a lot
of the time it's how much can they cram into
this like runaway Locomotive, rather than doing as much as
what they've done on let's say, The Dusk in Us
and All We Love We Behind as well, which is
dedicating quite large stretches to you know, a more patient approach.
I was kind of in a way, I was shocked
when I put this on for the first time and
just how quickly it ripped by yeah.
Speaker 4: This is like, like I say, thirty minutes, ten tracks,
and it just hummels from stuff. This is this is
the hardest Converge record since like Acts of Fall, I
would say, like at least like And the thing about
this album is is it is an immediate, thirty minute
hardcore record. But because we are blessed by having four
of the greatest musical genie to ever playing sort of
hardcore together, they managed to fit so much like just
like genuine magic into these tightly compressed hardcore hardcore songs
that I still don't feel short change.
Speaker 5: But I feel like nothing about this feels simplified with them.
Speaker 4: I think this is like maybe the album I could
hand to anyone to sort of get them into Converge
if they're already into kind of like heavy music. Because
it is immediate, it is punched. There are chorus hooks
on this album. They're all screamed, but they like there
are hooks on it. There are like so many mosh parts,
but it doesn't feel compromised or like Convers have sacrificed
the genius of their songwriting.
Speaker 5: They just kind of like they are just.
Speaker 4: Channeling it through the most hard hitting moss ready like
chaotic violence or outburst they can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the album in the prior Converge canon that I
think they shares the most kinship with would be No
Heroes and No Heroes Again. What I was getting to
Coverge it was it was always kind of unsung one
in the middle of the classic Naughty's run. But I
think as the cultural pendulum has swung more towards arg
Or Again, that's an example of a record where I
think you see more and more people say No Heroes
is actually their favorite one, and No Heroes is angry Like.
It's probably the most straight up pissed off Converge of
ever sounded, certainly in the twenty first century, particularly when
you read into you know, some of the public statements
and stuff they were making around the time of that record,
down to the title statement of it and Love is
Not Enough. There's more outright social commentary on this record
than you would maybe typically associate with Converge. This is
like a desperate fighting to you know, inspire something in
people record that is quite breathless.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and in the run up to this, because I
feel like this record got teased around the time of
Blood Moon, when that was coming out, when they was
saying we're gonna I think they even said they were
gonna lose two records that you five years lace, we
finally get it, and a lot of the stuff that
that's at least I remember Ben Collers saying something to
the effects of like, this is gonna be our best
reference Jane Doe, We've written like seventeen songs and you go, oh,
it's gonna be this labyrinth thine, super experimental, wild converge record,
and this.
Speaker 2: Being lean and mean and maybe.
Speaker 3: Their most metal record today in terms of the riffing
style and the most are almost straight up death metal
at points, like those things have always been flavors in
their sound, but them embracing it so wholeheartedly for such
large sections of the record, and that also being on
their shortest, most tightly wound album. You know, like I say,
of the twenty first century, it feels it's amazing how
much conviction there is in this band. Still, not that
you've had reason to doubt them, but listening to this,
you do go, this does not sound like a band,
you know, with the years behind them of Converge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is both one where yeah, obviously I
don't know yet where I put it in the wider
converged canon. Again, I can't imagine it'll be top half
just because of how toweringly brilliant their catalog is, and
yet it's also unquestionably the best album we've had in
twenty twenty sixth us. But the gap between them and
everyone else is just like so apparent, And what a thrill,
as you're saying, to have that concentration of great ideas,
great parts per song in something that just whips by
so frantically, and you know, you have been able to
just play it again and again, like wind it right
back to the beginning of the moment ends the production
on this record, I think you're right to say maybe
it's more metal leaning. I was struggling find the word
a little bit. There's a fatness to it comparatively that
it's almost like they've shaved a little bit of kind
of off the top crust in the guitars and they've
girthed up the low end. You know, it's not the
most like cutting abrasive convergive ever sounded, but it's like
state of the art power production. And the title track
is you know, so many firings off of rockets of
parts and tempo shifts inside this like you know, sub
two a half minute interest of the album, that sort
of Roto Tom sounding fill like twenty five seconds of
the record is still just perfect and it's ripping and tearing,
and then punches through with that gang vocal refrain the
love is not enough. It's great, and then you get
Bad Faith and there's not a soul alive who on
their first listen to this album didn't immediately go.
Speaker 2: One are the rifts of the year.
Speaker 4: That riff honestly when like like again the Charge are opening,
this album comes album of the year when that Roto's
on film hits. But like that final just sort of
there's most bit is so fucking hard. There's that that
really is like short solo in the middle of that track,
which is fucking wild as well, and it's like yep,
call the some fucking rules. And then the sickest rift
that kicks off Bad Faith. That's why that is chunky
and mean like comes you have the kind of thing
like quite the wiry kind of mathy riffs that they
do when you think, yeah, dark Horse and shit like that.
This is just like grooving like in a way that
commotions don't always necessarily do.
Speaker 1: It's where the album title becomes. Covering Wolverine Blues already
was not enough, And that's a complimentary thing, that's right.
Speaker 2: They were right to do that absolutely.
Speaker 4: And it's like again just that low end kind of
metallic hardcore, but it still sounds live while and exciting,
even when though you know, doing something that is a
bit more bludgeoning like bad Faith, and I think that
that's just the chords of the work, and I'm just like,
these guys are just absolute masters where they can make
them that is a bit more like not like explosive,
as it's still just sound like it's going like a
grenade going off in your head because it's just played
with such intensity. Even like when they're going slow, it
is still just the most like exciting thing you're going
to hear this year.
Speaker 3: Well, it's just that you're so used to the converged song,
Like these kind of riffs have been in converged songs
for a long time, but often it's like this, you'll
get it for six seconds right at the very end,
and before you it's got oh no, we missed it,
like this opening with it and laying into it again
and again for the duration of the song.
Speaker 2: It's so confident, has so much swagger.
Speaker 3: To it, which again conversion on my absolute favorite bands,
but swaggering is not normally some of you associate with them.
It's like panic and unease and dread. This is just
like my friend discs. It squeezes the fun parts of
your brain, like it just causes a pressure to build
up behind your eyes.
Speaker 2: It's so exciting and.
Speaker 3: Chorus whatever you call it, that sort you can't give up,
like and Jacob Anice is letting his voice fly and
then laying back into the riff.
Speaker 2: It's just some bands just get it.
Speaker 3: And as soon as this song comes, as soon as
this coming, like you say, just went, this has got
to the album of the year.
Speaker 2: This is mental.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jake sounds insane on that bit. It's brilliant and
like one of the observations I've seen floating around around this,
you know this week that I really want to kind
of you know, compound and you know, Mark, my approval
of is how much better metallic hardcore like this sounds
when there are actual riffs. Because I think part of
the reason, like everyone's gone mental for bad faith, and
I think part of the reason, it's almost like the
perfect song at the perfect time, because I think this
is a case where, you know, some of the old
masters are almost reminding us what we've been missing, right
because not just in you know, kind of commercial metalcre
but also in you know the popular trendy beat down
hardcore or whatever as well. You still need actual guitar riffs,
not generic pit parts, but like an actual motherfucker of
a riff. It seems like that that shouldn't be a
secret weapon, but somehow it is. And Converge, I think,
are reminding people that if you have an actually good,
catchy riff, people will respond to it. And the song
that everyone has immediately gone, that's the hardest, you know,
fifth throwing moss song of the year. It's the one
with the biggest riff. You've got to remind the kids
what a riff can do. And I think that's it's
again the perfect song at the perfect time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, I say, like bands just armine enough rifts
now and Convert just kind of showing how it's done.
And the good thing is again for like the foone
Minute Hardcore Records Compact, it whips around in so many
directions because you get this, and then you're immediately into
Distracting Divide, which is the most kind of like insane
mathcore throwing all over the place with Ben Coller going
absolutely man.
Speaker 1: Ben Coller doing what Ben Coller does, Like there's a reason,
you know, in a pre respecial eye shout at him
as the greatest drummer could have listened to him on
fucking Distracting.
Speaker 4: Divide and how he is going like and again like
that's someone that's got like a breakdown sore riff.
Speaker 5: But coverly kind of just like makes it more musically engaging.
Speaker 4: Then again just being the generic Moss part that again,
I go mad for those Moss parts all the time.
But when Converge are dropping them and they're just like
playing them with just a bit of extra pizazz and
and again like just making them that much more engaging,
it's so much cooler to listen to.
Speaker 3: When it slams and that song it's it's not just
you know, like I think you're saying, it's just a
beat down where it's just open chords and there's no
flair to Whatso it's like, no, that sounds like I
think I was saying a moment ago but for a
few seconds, it's like, oh, we've got mastered on It's
it sounds like high on fire, and it's just like
it just pounds away and it's like barely a second
of recipite before it kicks off again. And I honestly
I think the song that follows it is somehow even more.
To Feel Something is even more wild and frightening than
distressing stabbing guitars. Yeah, it's like you just think, how
could this get more intense? And then they go, well,
we could do a bit a slayer for you, and
you go, yes, please, like I'm more.
Speaker 2: Than happy to have that. Yeah, that's song.
Speaker 1: I mean, those two songs together are collectively about three
and a half minutes long.
Speaker 2: It's brilliant.
Speaker 1: But to Feel Something is one of my favorites in
the record because that you say, it's like it's like
proggy sludge but being played at a million miles an hour,
almost like antithetically, but that like nauseating pins being jammed
into your skin, like clinking dissonant kind of effect. Part
in the sort of verses like it's so clever to
kind of offset you at that point, and then when
they eventually arrive at the stomping ride symbol breakdown at
the latter end, which they pull straight out of the
Dead Guy Apparatus playbook. It's like nineteen ninety five metallic
hardcore tricks but sounding totally fresh, you know, and it's
fucking blown the house up so much it doesn't even
feel unearned. When you get essentially an interlude track less
than ten minutes into the record, you know, but you
need the breather after to feel something, and so then
you get you know, Beyond Repair, which is Kurt Balou
totally leaning into like his Neurosis side, or even like
the Sugar when they go like really spacey and eerie
and it's just the the bleakest suspended above a suffocating
black void guitar tone. And there's a quote in like
the a sort of track by track run that they
did for this album where apparently, like you know, sort
of laid down this in one take and then after
we finished, just went that riff made me feel terrible
about myself, And yeah, man, that's what it feels like.
Speaker 4: It's so funny that and again your immediate famin At
Harcre record you need in the middle point of the
record and interlude a kind of a post metal interlude
try and I mean again, this is essentially like the
kind of extended intro to Amona Mok for me.
Speaker 5: Really they those kind of like see together so well.
Speaker 4: But this is like the point you've had this chaos
or the first and like ten minutes you go like
you need to slow down and catch a breath, but
it's so menacing, Like there is such an earing menace
that the song slowly creeps along with that guitar tone,
and again we're just kind of feeds into that raw,
earthy and just like shed them heavy again post metal
colt of lun and Euros is that kind of thing
on Mock and that is like it's so good about
and it's just great to have this break the middle
of the record that is like jamming there to kind
of like give you this moment of like showing the
bloodmin the band of Road Bloodmen that they're still operating
in this kind of ruthless efficiency of this album, but
they're just going to like giving you a taste of
it now to just sort of show that, like again,
we can fit so much variety and diversity into thirty minutes.
Other bands you need to step up and kind of
show this same kind of fearlessness with your songwriting rather
than doing a foe minute hardcore record that is the
same And again I like that same song played like
like eight times over twenty minutes. I'm down with that
For some of these bands, more on that to come,
but Converge have just kind of shown that you can
do so much more in such a type package if
you just have that fearless approach and also if you
are just happy to be four of the best musicians
in the genre ever. It's also just it's an amazing
show and tell for Converged being one of the best
sounding bands in the world. It's like, you listen to me,
It's almost like sun or say where people got how
why would you listen to that? It's just one note
for twenty mies that sometimes there's nothing that sounds better
in the world than a really loud, distorted guitar.
Speaker 2: That's all you need.
Speaker 3: And this song compositionly, it's great, but just every time
another one of the members appear has just got how
do you make a bass that's sounds like good? How
do you get drums that sound that explosive and dominating?
Where is that guitar tone from It's every time this
comes in, it's just like it's a proper for the
first half of this first half, first eight minutes of
this record every've been up to so far. It's so
gong ho and wild and fun and exciting, and there's
just this meditation in the minute where you just hone
in on how unbelievable it sounds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I love that.
Speaker 1: There's almost sort of like a ticking sound effect that
sounds like sort of like maybe just sort of shaking
at the bottom of the guitar, you know, like the
bass guitar or something, and it adds this you know,
real sort of like nervousness, almost like a paranoia to it,
and you're right. It leads you into them on a Mock,
which is one of the more like sludgy, doomy pay
songs on the record. Right at the heart of it, again,
insane guitar sounds on it, though only they are getting
really I think it, you know, it speaks to the
kind of record this is really that around this point
in the Duskiness or on All We Lovely Behind, is
when you were getting to songs like the title track
of the dusktin us or coral blue where you know
those real stretching of kind of textural wings moments. This
doesn't do that so much.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The closest kind of points are stuff like this sort
of harrowing sludge dirge. You know, I think this is
a even like obviously what is so impressed by it
is how much they jam into the thirty one minutes.
It is a less eclectic, you could say record then
anything they've done in a long long time, honestly, So
like if you're waiting this against other Converge records, there
is maybe that aspect to it, but the name of
the game here seems to be, you know, cutting the
fat and making the sleekest wrecking ball of a record
that twenty twenty six Converged can can feasibly make. I suppose,
you know, Gilded Cage later on kind of fits into
that mold as well. And you know, again like Jake
like really fucking eerie on that song with has a
lot of the more kind of unmissible social commentary as
well with the lyrics about the pharmaceutical industry. It's really
less skin crawling, and that's a case of you know,
it's not the moment of like almost post rockish kind
of beauty that you got on songs on The Duskiness.
It's each time they deviate into a different mold of song,
they almost like they fill a different role, not just
on the record, but in their overall cannon. You know,
it's like we've got the Duskiness title tractor to sit
there in this that hears a different thing? Is this
weird skin crawling feels like you're trapped in something rather
than somewhere you can really breathe, you know, a song
like Gilded Cage, which is where you can say, you know,
there's not a lot of beauty on this record. It
is a like paranoid sick freak out of a record.
Speaker 4: More so, Yeah, I think because Guildy Case has just
kind of like woozy kind of unstable feeling to a ware.
Speaker 5: Again, it is the slowest song on the album.
Speaker 4: It's the kind of like one where they see an
one where they do kind of ease off it and
even when a mock has a kind of enterens it
to it, Guilder Cage it goes violent and heavy on
the chorus. It's to really like punctuate it, but Bannon's
kind of doing that kind of uneasy, unstable shout kind
of vocal that he sometimes does, and it just it
adds a panic, it adds a kind of volatile kind
of feeling, and it's just such a dark and moody
track that you don't get again that those moments of
beauty that kind of like we're always that where people
would say, like, oh, compose, they're not just a violent badge,
you know, we listen to to these songs, and I
think but like because of the mood of the record,
it works having the kind of like slow songs be
more like Gilded Cage where it's still again it's still dark,
it's oppressive, so it doesn't kind of like betray the
tone of the record.
Speaker 3: I think a mon A mark and I mean force
and presence. Just not skip over with that song, maybe
the most forceful, Like it's one of the most frightening
things you're gonna hear all year. It's it's just it's
taking the piss at that point.
Speaker 1: And I love when they switch into almost like the
riffic follows that I swear it's like midnight.
Speaker 2: It's like a black fucking black thrash, black speed.
Speaker 5: Leave guitar lick. That's rollicking in good time.
Speaker 2: OK. Yeah, and you know we're in that run.
Speaker 3: And then I look at the track lists and I
see that the next few songs are you know, the
longer a bit of a sendjutsu move, you might say,
but you look and the Gilded Cage coming in and
that being like you guys described it perfectly, like nauseating,
uneasy stress, kind of not ballad but like kind of
post punk nightmare. And for me, the moment on the record,
which does have some of that beauty that you're talking about,
where not to an extent that you've had on previous records,
but make me forget you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, when they
like Becau those do melancholy better than probably any band
in the history of hardcore, and that there's loads of
that on the Dusk in Us, and there was a
bunch of that blood Moon and we Lovely Behind like
it was major flavors across their later records and that
coming back but being maybe more like I say, metallic
and groovy that you typically expect from that sort of thing.
It's just it's an it's an amazing combination. It's one
of my favorite songs. In the record, it's it's spellbinding. Yeah,
maybe Forget You is.
Speaker 1: It's possibly my favorite on this like after Bad Faith
obviously at the start of the record. This was like
the song that at most immediately just wowed me once
I reached it, because it's it's kind of in the
mold of those like epic emotional crust songs, which I
think Converge are, you know, among the progenitors of. In
the first couple of minutes of that song, they almost
feel like like Eeros and Tero's era oath Breaker in
the way the oath Breaker at that time really felt
like Converge, you know, where Ben absolutely just like pinning
that lively cross beat down on the toms, but Kurt
is like pulling these like spiraling, escalating gatar leads out
as it progresses, and the way that eventually unfels its wings,
and the second half is in the way that songs
like a Single Tear and Last Light, like those kind
of converge songs are just like fucking break your heart,
you know, like those wrecking alls, the emotions that I
never said what I meant to part. As the band
move from that like rigid, crusty attack to then just
like coming in waves at you is sublime, you know,
and then the way that almost functions as like the
first part of a two part closer with we Were
Never the Same, and how that swims out of it,
and then it just it takes those like emotions and
then just like I don't know, it'd be more expected
maybe to have the more you know, breath taking part,
shall we say come second, but instead it like it
takes those and then fucking wrangles them into new shapes
like balloon animals. You know, it's fucking brilliant.
Speaker 4: Like that closes, it's like one of the weirder tracks
on the record and is kind of how it strucks
and weaves and these like unconventional parts into the songs
because you get you're coming up. It's like amazing good
that nothing could make me forget you, kind of like
emotional outpoint.
Speaker 5: And then it kind of just like snakes back in
in this way and it's like.
Speaker 1: You can really hear on that song how ben Kla
got the gig filling of a high on fire as well,
like those incredibly involved tom parts. It's pure that playbook
like but.
Speaker 4: That's when you have that like bass and drum intro,
but then when the guitars come in, it's kind of
like it's like, oh that, that's not what I expected
the song to go. I thought it was gonna be
a bit more again like hard rocking. But again I said,
this is the most accessible convention. But they do still
like say, throw throw so many like curve balls in there.
They don't make it like super easy for you. I
just didn't compared to where they have been. It's just
because it's so much more media But again it's it's
doing that without sacrificing the complexity of the music. And
again that I think these closing two songs just showcase
that best of like kind of being this like one
too suitet of If you like converge, you're gonna fucking
love the way this Autumn's because it is just everything
converged kind of do across two songs like kind of
exploding out at you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the song where when I first heard
the record, every other song I immediately could pull things
from it that stuck in the memory really strong, like
it I could sing the riffs back to you. This
was the one which didn't do that, and so on.
First I thought, oh, maybe that's they've closed on the
weaker song there, that's there's no such thing as a
week song on this record. But I certainly I've warned
this so much recently, and I think it's such a
I think, like you're saying, you'd think make Me Forget
You is the more natural closer.
Speaker 2: But I love that on their mean lean metal.
Speaker 3: Record at the very end, they just go like, we're
just gonna throw as many nasty riffs at you as
you possibly can, try and keep up it. Kind of
in a way, it feels like the much more finale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, if this is Converge, going back to
basics in a way, I mean, we've spoken about this
for I don't know, twenty thirty minutes whatever, this thing
of me. I feel like this is a shorter than
average Converged review, maybe because the record is short, you know,
and it's more densely packed with ideas maybe than it
is you know, really spreading them out. But if this
is them, you know, deliberately cutting it back to just
like this is the four member of the band, no collaborations,
almost as off the cuff as you can imagine Converge being.
It's just another way in which they're absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 4: It's just a masterclass showcase for the band of kind
of going like, yeah, we can do this in half
an hour.
Speaker 2: Keep up.
Speaker 3: It's maybe it's early to say it, because they are
one of the greatest bands of all time and I've
loved their records for so long, but I really do
think this is the best album since Axtra Fall. I
know that a lot of people were saying that when
it came out, and partly just went like, well, you know,
let's not Before i'd heard it, I thought, let's be
careful now, because we do this a lot.
Speaker 1: We always Yeah, I think The Dusk in Us is exceptional,
and I've really love Blood Moo as well, if we're
counting that. But yeah, see, this is what I don't
even know. It's it's not an unfair show. Well, it's
a slightly.
Speaker 3: Confusing thing to say, because I do prefer it. I
agree with what you said that The Dusk and Us
is top five. I think I prefer this to The
Dusk in Us and I'm not sure this is top five,
so I don't know how that works. But such as
the complexity of you know, trying to wrangle these records
like it's it's just harder than they've been in some time.
It's more direct than there'd been years, and it bocks
that trend of softening and maturing with age with such
explosive pattern just it almost makes me laugh. It's it's
one of the best bands ever, continuing to be one
of the best bands ever, and it's just something that
other people can't compete with.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there there's our take on Lovers Enough from Converge
and if you are wanting more meaty riffs, then we
move on to Silosis and the New Flesh. This is
the like seventh album from Silosis, but it's kind of
not straightforward to that in this story because it feels
like Silosis were reborn in a way not too long ago,
four albums throughout the late naughties and twenty tens where
they were a core part if a parenially underrated one
of the new generation of British metal bands in that time,
and then they went on a bit of a break,
came back in twenty twenty with Cycle of Suffering and
I love that album, but in hindsight, it feels more
like that album was almost polishing off the run that
they had started before that and then starting their new one.
You know that album has more in common with twenty
ten Silosis than later twenty twenty Silosis A Sign of
things to come in twenty twenty three is the album
where things change for Solosis a little bit, and the
fundamental seemed pretty similar comparatively.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Of all the cases of modern metal bands tweaking their
sound to essentially appeal to a wider audience, it's one
of the more minor ones, I think where I think
pretty much everybody who liked Silosis went with them on it.
This isn't a parkway driver and architects what have you
where the fan base has been majorly split by some
kind of change. But the shift in approach from hypertechnical
melodic death influence thrash to kind of still that but
just grooviier and more straightforward and more washy was detectable,
and it feels like with it, the conversation around Silosis
has changed it in the last three years, where they've
gone from you know, an underrated cult band of the
UK scene as they were throughout the twenty tens, to
a band kind of renewed in what people's actual estimations
of them Are and Silosis are against the odds of
how it felt to be a fan of them, particularly
during those years where they're hiatus. They're bigger than ever
now and it's not as large or drastic trajectory as
you know, someone like Malevolence, for example, who are basically
like a potential Bloodstort headliner now, but they've just headlined
the Forum right on top of that huge bill of
like combined tour packages even just off their own back.
They've just played the Rits in Manchester. They're playing like
few thousand cap venues now rather than just a few
hundred as you might have seen them ten years before.
It's kind of working what they're doing it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like again, they they've kind of gone the same
trajectory as I believe then when are like the most
closely comparable band of again they were part of that
same kind of like late Noughti's early twenty tens UK
metal scene.
Speaker 5: They had a break and then they came back.
Speaker 4: And suddenly got Their break was shorter than the silosises was,
but they've come back and now they're again, they're you know,
playing the fum They're playing these couple of thousand classy venues,
just playing kind of a big, meaty, kind of like
populist metal metal that you would have on a festival
main stage. And that's that was kind of, like said,
the pivot Silosis made on the last album again was that,
you know, due to Josh's time playing an Architects, like
that was always the discussion, has he kind of playing
a big band and kind of gone, is gonna take
that into Silosis? Some people discussed I've never kind of
read too much into that, but it did just feel
like Silos just took what they did and just kind
of like, what's gonna make this more main stage ready?
And and I think they did it like DC on
the last album. I think that's maybe like one of
my two bottom sides of records. I still think it's
mostly very good, but it wasn't as like I think
Solos have been like a great BAM so long. That
was their first go at the kind of like accessible
take on solo, and this is where they've kind of gone,
We're going like all in on it now and making
our kind of like this is our festival main stage
like Mosha album, And I think like for the most part,
they've done a really good job again like refine that
and making it bigger than ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously it's called the New Flesh. I'm not really
into the cover art, but it's diverging from Soilosis, you know,
typical asthetic.
Speaker 2: Ye's the thing.
Speaker 1: Silosis were a really important band to me when I
was a teenager, and that like twenty ten's run up
to and including when they came back with Cycle of Suffering,
it is a subtly different beast to what they are now,
and like the most love and attachment I have in
me for Solosis is for that era. I wasn't necessarily
like really like heavily anticipating this record the way I
once might have from Silosis, But in the wider landscape
of twenty twenty six, what they are and what it
was when I put this record on is a blistering
reminder of what you're supposed to be getting one of
these modern metal albums with a shiny, futuristic cover art
following up a you know, as you say, a successful
slight pivot for the mainstream and all that, and it
just straight up rocking shit. Was such a breath of
fresh air because we've got so many cases now where
one of these metal bands, you know, making their music
play for big venues basically just means they're shit now.
And I look at this and I go, god, Silosis,
not only are you like pretty good at writing these big,
main stage type groove, you know, bangers, but you're also
in it, not ashamed to be a fucking heavy metal band.
Speaker 2: Fucking thank you. Someone had to do it.
Speaker 1: And I know there's a couple other bands you could
throw up malevolences out there as well. Who are you know,
similarly minded, spirited bands, but getting this and you know,
not feeling that the tide of dissatisfaction so often it's
come my way recently and instead of just being like,
oh yeah, I'm enjoying this.
Speaker 2: This is metal. I like it was so nice riffs
is what we mentioned.
Speaker 4: Just the way this appum begins on like like the belief,
the service with that thrashing, wild like untaking, and then
it goes into the sick is like, oh my god,
you had in like the first thirty seconds more rifts
that were on the entire Last Bury Tomorrow album.
Speaker 5: Like, good job, Silosis, you get it.
Speaker 4: Because here's the thing, Like, I think this album it
is quite modern metalcore at points in a way that
Silos haven't necessarily before. Even again the last album kind
of it. There are you know, synth touches and choruses
and loads of breakdowns and that sort of stuff that
is all over modern metal core, but it's just packaged
in with fucking rifts and big, just meaty metal grooves
that kind of go like, yeah, I will take these
kind of modern metal compromises off the synth touches and
the chorus of that, because you are serving me up
a nice like gourmet of like excellent rifts and like
fresh parts, solos and all of that to just sort
of counterbalancey. So it's like you are unashamed to be
a metal band. You're not just trying to be like
a rock band that plays breakdowns with a pop chorus
and trying to sound deep and emotional. You are a
metal band who are just kind of making stuff that
that sounds big, that sounds like it can be popular,
that's gonna sound good on a festival main stage.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Silosis.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like they're a band which I've always admired more
than I like, and I've that ever present role they've
played where when I was getting into metal, especially the
British scene. They were just one of those ever present things.
And I kind of because I don't really listen to them,
I didn't really think about them all that much until
we review the record a couple of years ago, and
I hadn't really gone.
Speaker 2: Back to that one either.
Speaker 3: But listening to this, like back when when Soilosis came along,
initially they were a band would play with Lost Society,
you know what I mean. Now, well, now they definitely
couldn't play well Lost Society. That would be a very
in twenty twenty six. That would be a terrible matchup.
But listening to this, even though you're right, it does
sound kind of it's modern metalcore things in there where
you go someone who does like Architects and Parkway Drive
or whatever could listen to this and there'd be enough
for them to go on. You You listen to this
band and you go, this is a band still in
the lineage of Lamb of God, Machine Heead and Megadeath
and Pantera and in Flames and Sepultur like just popular, aggressive,
main stage ready but not pop oriented metal, which there
is an appetite. And again for me, it's like I
it's not my sort of thing so much these days,
But this record got by so much for me on
just being so pleased to be a metal record and
kind of that thing you were saying before, like that
shouldn't need be a secret weapon, but when you've got
enough denimon leather in the record, you're going to go
so much further.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's exactly the same thing of what we
were saying there of a revelation when a band used
real guitar riffs instead of just distorted pedal sounds meant
to resemble riffs, right, actual riffs, not indistinct down tuned,
you know, seven string faux gent bounce up and down
to the same old shit. Everybody that's lost all tradition,
you know, contact with with where they can from genuine
metal riffs like I say them in Malevolence are the
bastions for it right now in the popular metal scene.
And when Silosis get the stomp going, it's a proper
as you say, Pantera stomp. Mirror Mirror is obnoxious as
fuck in a great way with the back and forth
vocal part that sounds like hate breed. You know, like
even the most parts in this are more hardcore than
most metal core is right, like Hate Breed and mad
Ball exist in the framework of the record. Here there
are parts, as you say, that are more noticeably, you know,
kind of in conversation with what the modern metal course
scene is, which maybe a little bit you know, something
that's going to get your head around if you're a
long time Silosis fan. Erased is obviously that's like an
almost new metalish kind of bounce song with you know,
a clean chorus, a decent chorus, more than a.
Speaker 2: Knock out one.
Speaker 1: I would say it's maybe a weaker passes of the record,
but that track has still got a hilarious symphony of
pickscrapes essentially in the middle of it, which is great.
And my favorite songs on them are the thrash songs,
which are quite starting the vital on this album. Still
like I was enjoying the album quite a bit to
begin with, and then all Glory No Valor came in
and that fucking like fast furious not in the while
she sleeps away just wind up of that growling monster
guitar too, and they then let fly that is excited
to be a metal band. You know, the intent in
a riff like that, even just the subtle trick that
bounding to have forgotten of. They have the one guitar
track come in one ear before the second guitarist, you know,
not the same, not the same fucking thing, the same,
you know, like Quanti or whatever, but actually two different
guitar tracks coming in.
Speaker 2: It's pure juice. You know.
Speaker 1: There's an amazing bit where it does like a slam
beat down all good.
Speaker 4: That Moss part on this song is so hard and
that that whole like the bridge where you've got there
all growing, no fucking valor.
Speaker 5: They just pietrate that.
Speaker 4: And again it is maybe kind of like quite dumb
down silos just compared to some of like the more
it flashes. But you know when they were fresh in
part they kind of bans it with like the progy stuff.
Speaker 5: Here's gonna frash dumb down.
Speaker 4: With like just me and as Moss parts. But they
sound so mighty doing it that it I kind of
like domin it. And again that's where like the next
song is where they really go into the modern metal
or sound on Lacerations and again like its countered like
by having like big kind of powerful riffs that versus
like really hard and then the chorus it is the
kind of the most like like it. It's like anthemic,
kind of like melk or chorus with these simps playing,
but it actually sounds big in the way that a
lot of these bands who are doing the exact same thing,
they sound so meek and timid, and with the productions
for that and Solosis, they.
Speaker 5: Let it sound big and grand and imposing.
Speaker 4: I think, like again, Josh, all over this record, he's
so confident, whether he's singing or screaming, there is a
real kind of like confidence and character. And again, like
his screams, there's a real clarity to them.
Speaker 5: To me, it is catchy. So it never feels again,
it never has that sort of timid thing that puts
me off.
Speaker 4: So much of the kind of like milk or stuff
that this does in a way sound like, but it's
just the execution is so much better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think on the chorus front Lacerations, I think
it's actually pretty good. I think it hits a little
bit better for me than a raise does. And I've
always thought Josh when he, you know, when he lightly
sung on Silosis records, I've always thought they had a
pretty good voice, you know, And I think on that
one he sounds. I don't know, he sounds a little
bit more confident, more like he can just like really
get out there and sell it. He's not processed to shit.
There's a Door my Throne as well, has this almost
like a more contemporary epic synth led kind of blasting
almost like Lorna Shori or something, but a little more
like cyberpunk. But again they don't throw the baby out
with the bath water. I would say that that experiment
mostly works, you know, And there always used to be,
you know, the headline that would follow Silosis around when
people like when more popular auders didn't really like their
song so much, but they would always go, Josh Middleton,
what an insane guitarist? You know, not quite as like
central to their identity. These stays like the guitar flash,
you know, those like electric tapping riffs that you get
on something like Imperial, which for me is still like
the Silos's moment of magic in their Hell catalog. Really
it's more confined to the pocket, but you still get
the little moments on a Door my Throne or like
but the first trap beneath the surface as well, where
you have like a really sweet solo come in there
is a power ballad on this essentially ever at Once,
which is again not like strictly new out of nowhere
for Solosis. I think it almost like spoken about as
if this is like a totally new development. I think
it's more it's something they used to kind of hide
as not like a primary part of their albums, that
they've gradually gotten more comfortable weaving into the albums. Because
there's a hidden track on the Monolith album I absolutely
love and I think that's a better song honestly than
all the ballad type songs they've done since.
Speaker 2: If you've never heard it, it's really beautiful.
Speaker 1: But it's hilarious that this band's best acoustic song is
hidden away, not on the main track list, because I
guess at the time they weren't ready, you know, they
weren't comfortable being like, here's an acoustic song in the
middle of our thrash metal record and in that traditional
song for them, I'm happy for them to keep doing
them and keep you know, developing them and you know,
moving them as a more, you know, again an integral
part of the albums, because I do think they are,
you know, better than most, shall we say, I mean,
I dread to think what fucking metalcore ballads have been
out in the last couple of years. You know, this
is like, you know, it's good, you don't know what
your wins.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, it's shaming bands who's like the whole deal
is like big emotive medical or ballad because again, it's
just it's still got a bit of power to it's
still got conviction and like because it's almost kind of
like slightly grungy, sort of like time going, I guess,
because it's not doing the sort of the pop thing
that like all that because again, all metical bands are
only influenced by other medical or pop music right now.
So that's what they're doing with their ballads silos a
kind of looking just a bit into it that's a
bit more raw and just it fits their sound better
as kind of like putting the acoustic radio ballad into
the am here about it sounds like again throwing the
baby out with the bath.
Speaker 3: Well, it's you think about this time last year, we're
talking about the Architects record and the ballad on that
and what an unbelievably wet pile of tosh that is
and this you're up. But it's because of all those
bands trying to they're either do metical bands or they
listening to pop music, or it's like they just want
to Lincoln Park, like they definately want to have their
Lincoln part cross over here. You listen to this and
you go, this is more in the tradition of you know,
when Metallica would do ballads or yeah, you know, not
in quite the same way, but something like Alice in
Chains where it's like there's.
Speaker 2: A yeah bit more.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the recent Whitechapel albums when they've
included that kind of rootsier sound on those. I think
that's a clear parallel for what Silos have done.
Speaker 3: But yeah, exactly, and those White Chapel albums, you know,
when they were doing that sort of thing, are among
their most popular records. And it's like that's a band who,
in a technical sense, was softening, but we're expanding their
epertoire and it's so refreshing when bands take that lesson
from it, like they don't soften and become dull. They
can soften in ways and make their music more interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And obviously the whole silence is pivot that's going
on right now. I don't think you can accuse it
of anything like cynicism because the dude was literally in
a bigger band that he left to do this, you know.
And I don't I don't think it's fair really to
make the headline all about architects. But it is just
a brilliant quirk of the story. But Josh Middleton is
ay who in recent years experienced being in like an
arena festival headlining like Metallica supporting band.
Speaker 5: Main support to Metallica.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not only did he just stay married to
you know, his baby, so to speak, but also even
when this band starts to pivot being more widely accessible,
he still can't help putting death metal rifts all over it.
It's like, yeah, I can clearly write very straightforward floor fillers,
but I just love hate Eternal too much.
Speaker 2: You know, like Spared from the Guillotine.
Speaker 1: That's not the opening riff on that it starts with
a Dao side blast, that's like, that's from fucking like Legion.
That riff it's so sick, And then it's got the
like Zach Wild pinch bit at the end, which is
just hilariously metal. And I think Silosis there's an interesting
thought experiment going on right now, almost like how can
how big can we get? But while still Trojan horsing
death metal and all this violet extreme metal stuff that
I love into the mix somewhere, you know, and this
does feel like then, as you say, having made their
first you know, successful experiment, changing ACKed a little bit
last time, and then going further through the door that
they've opened, and you know, maybe those are your Silosis albums.
Maybe they aren't. Statistically in terms of number of people
go into their shows, you're more likely to say that
they are. And I would say that this is, you know,
at least as good as the last album, perhaps a
little bit better, is a more confident advancement from it.
At the very least, it blows the pants off of
most bands aiming to play in similar arenas to Silosis.
So I think on that note we can give it
the thumbs up to the new flash from Silosis. Let
us take a leaf out of Josh Middleton's book and
look below into the underworld, because the new Mayhem album
Liturgy of Death greeted us a couple of weeks ago.
The new album from the most legendary black metal band
of all time, even if not actually the biggest black
little band of their scene, as you know Emperor and
Demie Borget and you know Immortal when they actually played shows.
They've all gone on to sell more tickets on average
than Mayhem would. But in terms of recognizability, where your
your average person at a festival might go oh yeah
Mayhem with a hint of fascination in their voice. As
to their history and their infamy, Mayhem are the symbol
of everything Norwegian black metal and at its past, and
I think it is fair to say that there is
you know, plenty of the contemporary black metal audience who
aren't that invested in what modern Mayhem are doing. They've
moved on to newer, more underground bands, et cetera. But
for me, there will always be a pang of excitement
that comes when something from Mayhem comes along. I just
can't brush that out with me. And it's also because
they haven't actually overexposed themselves. This is the seventh full
length Mayhem album, which, when you consider their longevity, is
an extremely limited amount. Silosis now have that many, right
and Mayhem's last one was seven years ago, and when
the majority of their albums are so different from one
another as well, I always just find it interesting to
see what Mayhem are doing or what version of them
that we get. Elliott's I'm always interested in asking people
this question because the subject of post church burning years
Mayhem doesn't actually come up that often, and it's one
of my favorite subjects. What is your relationship with Mayhem, particularly,
let's say you know all of the post uuronymous output.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like like you say, for a lot
of people, Mayhem is just death Crush live in Leipzig
and they mysterious and maybe even Dawn of the Black
Hearts or whatever. But for some many people who just
seem to completely miss out on the fact that they
have one of the most unique and interesting back catalogs
of any black metal band that just seems to get.
Speaker 2: Completely brushed over. Where up to and including Esototic Warfare.
I think it's one of the coolest.
Speaker 3: You won't even call it an arc because it's not
a straight line or it's not really it's not even
going in.
Speaker 2: One direction, just like Out Wildly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, every record is so different from the other side
that Grand Declaration of War. We've got to talk about
that song because that is one of the strangest albums
I agree, like an acclaimed metal band has ever met.
I had it on the other day and I thought,
what the what is this like, especially as the sophomore record,
like they've come back off Mental and then Chimera, which
is just one of the most panic and jewe sing
albums you're likely to find, like an Audo.
Speaker 2: Ad Ko, like what is that production job? What were
you thinking?
Speaker 3: Absolute Madness? And then Esoteric Warfare maybe the best one
post Demusterious, just an excellent bent edge take on the
Mayhem sound. For me, I would say that run of
genuine madness ends there because Demon is much more straightforward
elder black metal record of and this is more true
to that. These two records, I say, back to back,
there's a seven year gap. It feels like Mayhem is
settling into something a bit more straightforward. But I think
the catalog is It's an amazing thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a big couple of weeks for me
because like Mayhem and Converge both like some of my
absolute favorite bands and bands I want to dedicate time to,
and it was a big treat for me getting these
albums in consecutive weeks. I agree Mayhem, I truly believe
one of the greatest bands to ever do it, and
twenty first century Mayhem is fucking wild, and by and large,
I don't think they always get the respect they deserve
for not having just copied their own homework for most
of that time. Because when you're a band with Mayhem's
literally having a movie made about the story, and you've
got an album as timeless as Demisteries don Tatanas, you've
got merch sales for life off the back of those
two things. They could have just milked that, you know,
and instead you get a grand declaration of war and
Ordo had ko albums that, in totally different ways to
one another, I think would both drive Sam to the
brink of madness, like utterly fucked, strange, brilliant albums. And
you're right, it's only recently really that Mayhem have actually
spent a lot of time going back to that nineties. Well,
they've done a lot of anniversary stuff and then musically
that's what Demon is, right, Like, the last album, Demon
is the most classic black metal album they've done in
that time, really the entire century, and I thought it
was pretty cool to hear them, you know, channeling more
of that demistery style again having not really done it
for much of their career. You know, It's like it
was like hearing a oh my god, an actual follow
up to Dim Mystery, Tom Satanas. We didn't get that
for thirty years, you know, because they weren't ment and
did everything, but doing that thing. Demons a killer album,
I think, if not my favorite of the preceding fifteen
twenty years. If you're asking, or do I Ko and
Esoteric Warfare are absolutely my shit. Legity of Death, Sam,
is this the first New Mayhem album You've ever listened to?
Speaker 5: It's the second Mayhem album I've ever listened to.
Speaker 4: Okay, Like, like I've listened to the debut because obviously
i have, because you know, when I've been dabbling in
my sort of exploring that, Yeah, obviously you have to
go straight to that, and that is obviously a huge,
important like record to the genre. And then I'm just
kind of like never felt compelled to kind of like
deep Exworm because I've heard rumblings that it's a head fark,
and I'm.
Speaker 5: Just like, I'll sit this one out, Ellie.
Speaker 2: It was correct. At some point, we will compel you.
Speaker 5: Again, like do you never know? With a lot of
these more out there records. Now, some of them I'm
more with some of them, I'm not like.
Speaker 4: But I was like, I had no no expectations going
into this because I'm like, I just don't see other
people talk about modern Mayhem records.
Speaker 5: So I was like, are they know, is this kind
of like an exciting thing for black male fans? Like
are Mayhem? Are they, you know, still putting out workfare
stuff or are they just kind.
Speaker 4: Of like a band cashing in on like the current
wave of like nostalgia for nights Back mal that comes
up every couple of years.
Speaker 5: So I had no expectations going into this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in terms of where you say, whether it's a
really exciting thing about metal fans, I think it's less
now than it was that' say, even just fifteen years ago,
because they were a more unpredictable beast right in the
sort of the naughties into the early twenty tens. But
I found it bound to the demon. I think this
album's been a grower, not a shower for me, because
it's to only a couple of listeners to really get
into it, which maybe isn't the most encouraging thing for
someone who isn't a hardcore Mayhem fan, I do concede,
but I am really liking this record.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The two guitarists in Mayhem are a guy called Telok
who was in a Norwegian band called Nidinghiar or something
like that, and a British guy who goes by the
name Ghoul, who before this was in mid Noughti's Cradle
of Filth, and they are both really talented writers and players,
if not maybe the absolute freak geniuses that Uronymous and
then Blasphema both were in Mayhem. One thing that I
think you really have to say about this album is
those guys in particular perhaps have done a shockingly adept
job at keeping Mayhem sounding contemporary. If you just put
this album on blind, I don't think you would immediately
saying it sounds like a really old classic black metal band. Instead,
it sounds pretty on pace with a lot of what
is contemporary today in the black metal underground. And they've
had those reinvigorments over the years with you know, new
guitarists and new rating teams. But listen to this, You've
got to remember the vocalist and both of the rhythm
section are all og black metalers from the late eighties.
Mayhem as a band formed in nineteen eighty four, they're
as old as like I don't know Testament or like
hell Aween, And with the best of will towards that
generation of bands, Mayhem and one of the only ones
you could put on and if you didn't know, actually
mistake for a modern band in their genre.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and those characters that like they're red Head, and
again they are because they're among the most unique players
at their respective instruments. It'd be impossible to even tell
if they were aging because there's nothing to compare them. Again,
it's like who drums like hell Hammer? No one like,
so it just it's always going to sound mad. So
even though I like say, they haven't got that manic
genius in the guitar parts these days, the fact that
those people are still around and Attilla being one of
the most divisive extreme metal even among extreme metal fans
a lot of them people don't go with Mayhem because
mainly because of him.
Speaker 2: I happen to love it.
Speaker 3: But that sort of inherent wild man personality that this
band has, even if it's not as radically apparent as
it has been in the past, it can only be
suppressed so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the guy who produces their albums now as well
is the drummer for Funeral Missed. He also does the
Wattean albums, and he does I think a sensational job
at making these albums sound mean and terrifying an abyssle
like real scary black net should be. I think Modern
Mayhem honestly have some of my favorite sounding black metal records,
and if you want an imperious sounding black metal record,
he might be the guy to go to right now,
because stylistically, as said, it's not as overtly experimental as
their you know, their most mad albums from the noughties,
nor is it quite as I think traditionally you know,
old school and therefore catchy and hummable as Demon was.
This has got longer songs on average than the last one,
but instead you have these like really dense, tightly wound
songs that just really whip up and a cult evil atmosphere.
The first track has an intro featuring Garm, the singer
from Ulva. I just kind of took the off guard
because Mayhann albums don't really tend to have what you
call features, you know, but it's cool to hear him,
you know, actually singing on a black metal record again,
you know, adding these like spooky, insidious choral type vocals
to the start of the record on top of this
really you know, scary sinister lea guitar bit and then
when it hits the blast and you have like again
like terrifying like brass bits and stuff and just this
like stampede out of hell. The drums because of what
you're saying, no one drums like hell hammer and the
production and it's fucking incredible. The drums sound monumental, Like
if if you want to know, here's another complaint for
everything else, right, if you want to know why you
complain about drums sounds a lot of the time. Fucking
check this out and hear how absolutely crazy powerful a
proper drum kit recorded properly can sound.
Speaker 2: It is an avalanche.
Speaker 4: I was surprised at how good this sounded this album,
Like this opening track, I think so is Yeah, it's fantastic,
like like is my some backsman, Look I do like
this record.
Speaker 5: This opening track kind of gave me everything. I kind
of went from the album.
Speaker 4: I was like, it's such a good, like great comprehensive
opener and they're still cool stuff throughout the album, but
I was gonna like it's got that kind of like
droning goths part. It's really evil, it's really epic, it's fiery.
It's like it's like the sound this album is really
quiet and sounds so firing, intense and still just reek
of death and decay.
Speaker 5: Like it it's so like I mean, like.
Speaker 4: As a vocalist, I think he's like really interesting, like
where he's kind of got this like real decaying vibes.
His vocals hits all the right spots and the closing
stretch where it really ups the aggression is like great.
And again like the drumming, the way that blast sounds
really good, and I was like, oh, a black moram
that produced well but still sounds evil and scary and menacing.
It's it's it's a way to get me again, more
b than black metal where you can do it about
it sounding like that that sort of biscuit ting monotony
that I find sometimes a bit of a problem.
Speaker 5: There is a dynamics to the.
Speaker 4: Sound of this whilst it's still very i guess traditionally
black metal, but also not in some ways, Like again,
I'm kind of coming at this largely blind, but I
was just kind of like, oh, this is, yeah, a
more interesting, engaging sound while still sounding almost like exactly
what I would expect a traditional black metal record to
sound like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is hilarious, like just sonically, even though they're
compositionally mad at them as well, well, just sonically it's hilarious.
This band have this album and Auto ad Ko both
in their catalogue, like within the last twenty years, both
Like what the fuck?
Speaker 3: But maybe that's like that might be the counterintuisive thing
about this record, because I think you were saying something
about mayhem.
Speaker 2: I mean that like death and decayed sound.
Speaker 3: That's that is something that's basically been present on every
single record, despite how different they are, Like You're the
Way to Death Crush and you just got like this already,
this sounds like it's been pulled out of a crypt.
It's just it's disgusting and in a sense, you'd think
that would set them up beautifully to age into that
they could go further down that path. And the fact
that they don't that there's like carnival sounding lead guitars
and choirs and like you say, a drum kit that
sounds like that. Mayhem in many ways will set themselves
up to go one way and every single time they
just go in completely the opposite direction. And this being
so fast and aggressive and just just at it is,
it's so like surplus to requirements and it's it's just exciting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Week for Nothing riff, like a couple of tracks
in is absolutely insane with there's like frantic, spindly threat
coirn like that's what I want on a Mayhem record.
Then you get Aon's End like in a few tracks
into that point, which is like even more blasty and
direct straight to the point. There's one hilarious bit at
the start of Realm of Endless Misery where they just
deploy a straight up fucking explosion, just the bomb goes
off at the start, which what you do that records
like Tridable for Clips opens like that, and I guess
maybe this producer just likes inserting grenades into these albums.
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And then there's like amazing like one key guitar shit
in the middle of that song, like just the freakiest
chords and Attila Cheeha elevates any record he's on for
his vocals. To me, he's on the mount Rushmore of
extreme vocalists, maybe number one, and this he's not pushed
to like his uttermost limits of freakiness. But the way
he just coils and slithers like a venomous snake throughout
these songs so that you could go around any corner
and he's just they're gurgling, ready to bite, you know,
just the hints of that like fucked sick hungarian opera
voice that he does, with the crazy layering stuff going
on in despair and the bits where you're just sucked
down into like spirals of like evil cacophonous laughter, Like
just his presence entirely surrounding you, along with how spindly
and weird some of the riffs are as well, is
just you know, enough to keep me fascinated and gripped
to this record The Spells.
Speaker 4: When working like vocal, I was like, yeah, he's a
really just captivating presence that like that was do that,
you know, like that chanting sort of stuff over which
again just it's an easy way to add a bit
of grandeur to these songs, to have some like yeah,
Charles going, but he just he's so unique and again
like he's got so much presence on these tracks that
it does keep it engaging, Like there's just this weird
thing where I was like, I found something so listenable
while still being kind of like again quite obtuse and
kind of like try and leaving this bit.
Speaker 5: Way, but it just it sounds like it just did.
It sounds good and they're doing it. I was kind
of like I can go with you, like again, maybe.
Speaker 4: I won't be able to on other Mayhem records where
they they push some of these like there's sort of
the glimpses of the weird of elements here. If they
push them further, maybe I'd halpen that bit harder, but
they they fight this really nice balance between you again
just because of like firing a barrage of riffs was
having weird kind of like unsettling like coyly guitar parts
and a vocalist again chanting one moment or wretching the next,
but always kind of feel like a evil like demonic.
Speaker 5: Presence over the whole record where he is conducting the
whole thing.
Speaker 4: It just it keeps it kept me on my toes
as a listener while still not make me feel like
like either like bord Or kind of like, oh, this
is going too far from me, I'm switching off. I
was surprised at how constantly locked in I was, and
largely down to a Tiler as a vocalist, just captivaking
me every time he sort of comes in.
Speaker 3: It's amazing that a band with Mayhem's story to the
point you're right, they make a film and write books
based on it. One of the most unbelievable things about
them is that at Tilla is real. He just he's
so mental. One of my favorite bits in the film
in Lord's of Chaos is when they're recording, they mister
just and I kind of he does. He's not appeared
yet because he's not a major part of the story
in the in the early years, and then they're just
they're recording and it cuts to I think he's even
played by his son, and he just holds the mic
up and that fucking noise comes out, and you go, no, what,
Like I had never really paid attention to the eye
that someone goes into a studio and makes that noise,
and the fact he still has that and has expanded
his repertoire so much since. Then again, when you're playing
on a record with hell Hammers. For me, one of
the best extreme metal drummers of all time, and yet
he's not man of the match. I think what he
brings to this Attila brings this record is incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just for anyone who like, isn't you know, particularly
familiar with who we're talking about, Attila Chiha. He has
a solo project called Void of Voices where he just
goes on stage and just makes a million noises, like
just by himself, just a million voices tumble out of
him because he's that guy. And I love when when
some of these elements come together right when they do
like a thunderous sort of tom breakdown with that huge
sand drum kit, and then he can really go at
it over the top, the real moment of magic for me,
where it just really pays it all off. The final track,
the Sentence of Absolution, might actually be one of their
best album closers overall because it just feels so you know,
climactic and imperious, and they get the gallop going and
they've got the classic Mayhem double bass, this looping tremolo
rift that just screams like classic second wave to me,
like it's the most I get that nineties black metal
feeling on this, with that bit of shuddering dissonance sewed
into it as well. It's just like, it's such a
good black metal rift and at the end suddenly this
like mad Igor Cavalierra esque tribal drum part swoops in
to take the record home, and it's so cool and
so imposing. That kind of stuff is just designed to
tickle my brain. Like again, maybe not the entire black
metal audiences these days, but I am the audience for this, really,
and I think this is excellently even if maybe possibly
right now my least favorite Mayhem album, but I think
this is excellent. They're just one of the most continually
relevant bands in this genre's history Liturgy of Death from Mayhem,
of course, and we might not usually have this much
black metal. Certainly this front loaded in the reviews, but
along with one of the biggest names in its history,
we also have one of the buzzier metal records of
the early part of this year in Worm, who have
necro Palace and Worm have been an underground favorite for
a few years. They've got a few records under their belt,
but this is the one where they've started to get
attention from you know, the big mags coming to talk
to them, and I get it because you know, Underground,
as it may be, they're an easier cell in having
major look at this fucking thing WTF value because there
is a major element of black metal camp about Worm
if you look at their merch and their promo images.
The main one for this album is insane. There's a
definite element of like kitch costplay dress up, going with
this kind of retro second wave cradle of filth kind
of aesthetic, but it's so ott you have to laugh.
Like the main guy in this band, Phantom Slaughter, he
dresses like a Victorian gentleman, but with sunglasses and a
bullet belt. It was like weird and naturalistic mismatch of
just hilarious drip. They've also been joined recently on guitars
by Phil Tugus, who is one of the recent underground's
most prodigious men of a thousand bands. Some of his
projects including Catialist, Zycaradius, Atrementous, and earlier this year already
he's got an album out with zul, all of which
are completely stylistically different. Basically, it's just a guitar whiz
and this album is majorly the most ott thing they've
yet done. This is maximalist, mental, over the top metal,
which is a bit of a theme this month, as
we'll get more on too later. But this record is daft,
and it is a flavor of daft that I would
think is a bit of us perhaps per chance.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm so in on this, Like you're selling me
like a sixty odd minute black metal album. It's got
to deliver on that fright.
Speaker 4: And again, like I saw the album covered this and
I was like, I can ballpark the sound of like
like Worm on that cover. It's Castle Vania's shit. That's
gonna be like the point of reference. But he's been
Like the commitment to bomb bast and Grande on this
album is a step above a lot of again like
the other sort of black even though you know, like
Lamp of Murmur, like they aren't even they're not on
this level of like ottre tasteful. Yeah, yeah, they have
a bit more like kind of like tact and taste
to it. Worm are just like that fetch My Cape,
like let's rip out every solo possible, like Gates of
the Shadow Zone.
Speaker 5: There's like an intro, it's just like pure guitar whankory
for like.
Speaker 4: How many how long it goes on forth, and it's
so flashy and so daft, but then like when the
am gets going, it's kind of like, oh, there is
just like brilliant black metal here, just combined with like
mental symps and just again cramming every pocket of this
album with as many guitar solos and just kind of
like flourishes as possible. What's kind of like just dressing
up in the most like vampire kitchen manageable and it's
such a blast for the entire time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Worm feel like a really twenty twenties band, and
they do have that kind of, as I say, slightly
kitch kind of cross pollination of things where even though
it's very deliberately retro nineties in esthetic, this is not
a record that will come out in the nineties because
it's too arch in how it's kind of pinching from
different genres and smooting them together after the fact of
those genres, you know, already being established traditions. But Worm,
essentially they were like a death doom band that suddenly
put like a load of outrageous shred into it and
then it gets a Necropalace and you look at the
album R and you're right, you go, if there isn't
any Castlevania symphonic black metal in this, then I'm going
to have been short changed by this. Basically, if you've
ever listened to Demie war Gear and went, this is good,
but it could do with more ingoy moumsteam, then this
is the record for you, which.
Speaker 2: Think of that as a pitch.
Speaker 3: And the fact we always, with all our variety of
tastes on the film, we all go like, yeah, sounds fantastic.
Like I always think it's super impressive when a band
like this comes along where.
Speaker 2: The thing that they do is so specific and so niche.
I just love that they're called Worm.
Speaker 1: It's just like the least for what they've had like
a million different logos already, Like how many different ways
you write worm? Yeah, And it's like, you know, sixty
five seventy minute black metal record which has castle Vania
imagery and wild synth choices, and it's pulls as much
from they say Summoning as it does Wing they mount Steam,
and yet you put it on and because it just
goes so hard and it's so much fun to listen
to you just I can't imagine anyone not like in this. Yeah,
it's epic, is the thing, because the albums over a hour.
The songs you know, Dungeons Synth intro notwithstanding, they range
from like seven to fourteen minutes, and they have a
million solos person where like on the you know, if
you're gonna do like for fans of list of bands
alongside the obvious Emperor and DeBie bor Gear for the
you know, nineties grand black metal flavor, I genuinely think
you could put Dragon Force because it's that kind of
like epic minutes and minutes of solo at a time.
Guitar absurd it. But if it was just the guitar shred,
I think I would get tired of it more quickly.
But thankfully it is mixed in with you know, some
legitimately good taste when it comes to composition and tone
and these kind of things, and the load. Crucially, it's
shared across things like the keys and those nineties style,
simplic black metal keys which are a thing that I
am almost incapable of not liking, and those brilliant nineties
de mooborgear style keys that are meant to sort of
sound like choirs that that kind of like ha horror hot,
that whole thing, the intro of Hales of Weeping has
that majorly. It gives you a good mix of flavors
to carry an hour long record.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: The piano melodies on the title track are awesome and
just aimed right at my cradle of felf loving ass.
Song titles like the Night Has Fangs and Which Moon
Colon that the Infernal Masquerade. It's ticking all the boxes,
you know, but I love the you know, the dual
guitar and the harpsichord leads in the Night Has Fangs,
that kind of neoclassical edge that that song has. There's
one bit in Black Heart where it goes so is
the major key almost little mermaid turning up, and then
later they do that over like a funeral doom rip.
Speaker 4: I think like that was when I ask you, like, ah,
this is getting a little bit silly, But I'm like
I'm getting more and more into how major.
Speaker 5: Key and like stirring this gets.
Speaker 4: But the thing is like they balance that with like
again there's like actual doom parts. There's bits of golf here.
It's not all it's not always maximalism, because that could
I think sixty odd minutes of that could get exhausting.
And again, like it is mostly maximist this album, but
they they mix up and they again there are moments
you go like, oh, that's actually quite tasteful to go
along with the daft solo that came thirty seconds before
it's it's it's nice and feel like Dragon Dreams, Like
that's when you know you've got like really nice, like ambient,
kind of like clean, chanted vocals in the second part,
and it builds again to this epic outro or those
soaring leads, like you've got chances everything's going off all
at once, but they've built it over the song where
again they've had slower parts and it's a bit dark,
it's evil, it's got sick rifts, and so none of
these songs kind of feel like just the same thing
for nine minutes that they all kind of like move
and weave in and out.
Speaker 5: Of different bits. So it keeps it, it just keeps
it really engaging.
Speaker 2: Listen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I think there are you know, you can
imagine there are so many retro keyboard black metal loving
style records. I think Worm have gotten some of the
most attention out of those because at the same time
as that they're weird and amongst everything else, they're from Florida, right,
They're this, you know, the Sunshine State making this like
Goofy has frozen black metal, and they started off, like
I said, doing swampy death doom, like one of their
albums is called Foreverglade, and it's coming from that background,
and then gradually, like a few albums in melding in
the black metal makes it kind of weird and distinct
because through most of the songs, like the title track,
for example, which is mostly very you know, cradle or demu,
you do have mixed in these like churning, low down,
chewed rifts that are very atypical to that style, and
particularly it comes out in Halls of Weeping, where you
have rooting a lot of that song, these sort of
spectral voice or disembowelment style reverberating kind of minimalistic clean
death doom guitars that just like pile on the funeral vibes.
And there are tons of bounds who do that thing
as well. But you splice that with the grandiose dimuisms
and there you go. You've got something new, and it.
Speaker 3: Seems like such an impossible combination. And then for this
to come out on I think it's on Century Media,
this record, and it's like the sound of it as
Arthur Rizzick does it, and you can tell because it's
someone who's you know, got taste and understands how to
make a record at this sound good, but it's a
much more it's much more clarity to this rock than
there are even some of the albums that it's drawing from,
you know, like the nineties Doable, where it sounds more
box office than those records do. And that's something which
I've come on the show before and kind of complained
about records doing saying like this band have too much money.
Someone have robbed them before they met their next record,
And like.
Speaker 2: I was actually worried you were going to say the
Mayhemon albums sounded too good. Oh no, no, no like that.
Speaker 3: That's what I mean is like when it's done like
not not just purely for like the clarity sake, but
it's like it's the absolute rex response to the songs
they've written. This solum would not be nearly as good
if it had a low five production like that Mayhem
record is like those things are so much a part
of the appeal, and they just you know, it's something
of this scope and grandeur in this uh tapestry of sounds.
It's a really hard balancing act to make where that
doesn't sound like it would suit that swampy death doom
you're talking about, and yet it works somehow.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then to compound the point, the last track, which
Moon colon the Inferno ninth grade, which is the longest
of the bunch. You've already been like, you know, you've
been gorged by that point. They just push it that
bit extra at the finished line. It features a guest
appearance from Marty Friedman of Peak Megadeath. Apparently he messaged
them saying he'd heard their previous EP, which is awesome.
And you have a protracted, several minute long guitar dule
between it again like filter Gas already one of the
best guitarists for like both skill and taste, an invention
in the current netlsphere. And then the guy who play
the solo on Tornado of Souls, possibly the greatest ever.
Speaker 2: It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 5: I was like, is this going a little too long?
Is this a little too dumb.
Speaker 4: I was like, you know what, it's the only way
this ham could end, Like I mean that that's the
thing is like this it could only end in the
most bombastic guitars into the point where like the song's
finishing and the phone like guitar vamping goes on for
so long at the end after all, because they are
still just like so just like celebratory in there kind
of like.
Speaker 5: Appreciation for guitar and wizards. I'm like, you know what,
I'll let you have this one. Like it is daff
but it's so showy and so flashy that you kind
of you do get swept.
Speaker 2: Up in it. Martin.
Speaker 3: I'm not telling Marty Friedman to rein it in stop.
He could play over the birth of my firstborn and
I would not go near telling him to shut up.
And when he comes in on your record, you've just
gonna let him do as much as he likes. And
he does, you know, fifteen minute song and so much
that is Marty Friedman absolutely shredding. And what I love
is that sometimes we guess features like that they maybe
interrupt the sort of world building of the record you
suddenly got. Oh and I'm you know, in my room
listening to an album that was made by human beings,
some sort of sucked out of it. What's great about
this is you're I immediately got there's Marty Friedman. But
it does nothing to like interfere with the experience of
the record, which I think sometimes guess spots like this
when you have someone as iconic as him playing it.
Could it could do that, but I think it shows
real nouse both of him and from the band that
he's used. Tastefully might not be the word because it
is outrageous, but expertly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And it builds to this like wonderful climactic
melody that is like the credits rolling on a Kingdom
Hearts game, Like it's so good, and you know, I
could see the argument maybe that it's overstuffed, like is it,
you know, really going over the brim with diyinging on
these flavors. Maybe you could cut a twelve minute track
from somewhere in the middle if you wear a coward.
For me, this is worm, you know, realizing the most
of their potential that they have to date. It's really fun.
It's quite self consciously cheesy, which offsets maybe the more
gravely serious black metal album that we've spoken about from Mayhem.
Speaker 2: I like them both. I like both flavors.
Speaker 1: It's nice to hear someone doing this, you know, retro
symphonic black metal thing, but in a way that's genuinely
like eccentric and peculiar, you know, and adding flavors to
the mix in a fun way.
Speaker 2: I do think.
Speaker 1: You know, for example, if you enjoyed the Lamper Murmur
album at the end of last year, for it's grandeur
and you want to, you know, jump that bit further
here it is, sink your fangs into it. And you know,
these last two album reviews we've just done and the
Ruined to Beverst album from last month are collectively a
very fine start to the year in black metal. So
we're after the races. Now, there you go, Sam. We
are in between some insane, daunting pillars of over heavy metalism.
So here a quick pitstop, an oasis in the ridiculous
album desert. We've got a little slice of olt.
Speaker 2: Rock for you.
Speaker 1: Pony clearly cursed. Pony's last album, velveteen, we reviewed in
twenty twenty three and it was one of your favorite
albums of the year, So recap for us introduced for
anybody knew, who are Pony and why do you love them?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 4: So they're a Toronto based of like rock power pop
pop rock with you and willing to label them as
they kind of fit in, you know, the the DIY
punk or rock scene, but they are so much popular.
They are all about bubblegum melodies, naught ease, sort of
teen movie pop rocks or fair it's that thing.
Speaker 5: If that sounds good to you, like Pony, I think
are so far away the best act.
Speaker 4: They are some of the best choruses like that last
time velveteen was just jampackedful all of my favorite choruses
from twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: And I've kind of been.
Speaker 4: Waiting, like quite a long a wait for lot the
first thing. Well, this kind of came help like like
late twenty twenty four, I think it was. This album's
been a while sort of dating. But like say, if
you like your kind of all rock, but we're very
real kind of like pop sheen to it. Pony are
the kind of like the gold stand of that for me,
kind of the sort of the twenty twenties bands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if velveteen was such a such a favorite
of yours. How do you find that this follow up
is shaping up for you?
Speaker 4: I'm again just completely from the moment hit play on this.
I am swept away. I am on a cloud of
cotton candy and bubble gum and all of like pink
clouds and fluffiness.
Speaker 5: But like I love that, but this is maybe a
little bit more emo. It's a little bit more like
it's not as kind of like constantly bright and shiny
as Velveteen was.
Speaker 2: It's still you know, it's not mineral, is it.
Speaker 4: It's not just think about the guitar melodies that open
super Glue. There's like that kind of stuff that there
is a bit more of that in there, but that
almost going to get swept away. Any chorus comes in
and it is just like I'm happy listening to this.
I am so away with what Pony You're doing. Like
they are just like as someone who you know, grew
up watching Disney Channel and all of that shit and
loves like, you know, Freaky Friday and those movies. Having
Man just kind of doing that but with like just
a great understanding what makes a catchy chorus. Ponion just
a band who are just sort of tailor made for me,
and I'm still loving exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, it's exactly you can see it coming
out of the world of sort of you know, shimmery
bedroom alternative rock for sure, but with your saying that
kind of two thousands pop rock thing on it, Like
the singer is has one of the most frictionless voices
I think I've ever heard. Like, it's one of the
most just straightforwardly sweet, pretty voices, nothing but butter the
whole way through.
Speaker 5: If you don't like that, you're a coward, is what
I say.
Speaker 2: No, I'm just I'm just commented. That's that's the vibe.
Speaker 1: Right, You'll go in here for just the smoothest, nicest,
most lovely possible time. And it's funny.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: We just did the latest episode on the nine ninety
seven special and we had a little section in there
talking about a group of bands that I like to
think of as like Dawson's quak rock, like Third Eye
Blind and those kind of things, And I explain there
that like, whatever that phenomenon is, I have no part
of my heart attached to whatever that is. And Pony
are more two thousands than that, but they are more
as you say, like the two thousands teen movie sort
of follow on from something like that. Again, I I
don't have it. I don't have whatever kind of you know,
connection soft spot recollection of that that that that you
do that other people may do. But this album is
thirty minutes you know, beautiful and absolute breeze, so much
of a breeze that I'm basically not impacted by it.
It's like a gentle push of an album. But I
also think it's practically impossible to have a bad time
listening to this, Like imagine getting angry.
Speaker 5: I can imagine it. I can like and here's being
like I sort of get that.
Speaker 4: But where it's sort of avoids being tubus me is
that every chorus does hit for me, like we you know,
super good that.
Speaker 5: Everyone can see is like there and it's all just
bright and bubbly, and they are catchy choruses.
Speaker 4: I think like the best moments this like middle of
summer I think is just like power pop perfects, and
that is that song is gonna be This sound's gonna
be on a peat all summer for me. But that
song in particularly one I just keep going back to
as like amazing. The title tracks An a great example
of it. There were just, you know, like just such
joyous melodies all over this that even if it isn't
yeah you're it is friction as it is buttery, it
is just very nice and pleasant at all times.
Speaker 5: There's no edge.
Speaker 4: There's no edge to this, even if beginning it's got
a bit more like like lyrically, I think there is
a bit more like kind of like reckoning with like
darker feelings and emotions, but it's kind of just like
doing it in the most like it in the most
like bubbly way possible. But it just I'm just having
such a good time the entire tlements on that I
can't like not love every segments. And again it's thirty
minutes and it's finished, and I'm hitting player again immediately
because I just I can't get enough of these melodies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the way that the drums sound on Freezer and
super Glue, where it's got this almost bedroom style drum
but softened in the mix to like perfection, you know,
it is millennial pop rock sonics to a t. And
that's even before you get to a song like Sunny Something,
which is just like straight nineteen ninety nine pop radio
I'm trying to think of what the references for what
these choruses even sound like. And it's not rock music.
It's straight up like late nineties into naughty'st Disney Channel pops.
Speaker 4: It's the two thousands, Josie and the Pussycats movie. It's
like the exact frame of reference I have for what
Pony are doing this. And even you know, like every
little chrum which and all that, they want to rock
a little bit more and there's a little bit more
attitude and like it is, but it's just like it's bratty.
That's the attitude of it. It's not like hard, it's
going that way with it, and I'm just like the
guitars are a little bit crunchier, but again there's no
it's still just like super playful and listenable. So I'm
just like, I'm so down with that. And again, like
it's not gonna be for everyone, but as a kind
of like pushing that kind of like pure power pop
bubblegum side to the extreme, I think Pony just smash it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will say that there are maybe strict ever
spit more recently, but there were a couple more choruses
on this that you know, jammed their way into my head.
Then on the previous album, which I know is well loved,
I just don't recall the thing about it, really, but
Brilliant Blue is almost like two thousands jpop. It's so sweet.
And then I can't remember what song the ones like
it's clearer choruses there you go, like, you know, just
there have been I think kind of for me stronger
earworms on this one. Then on the previous record that
you know, again it's not aimed at me, but I
have been going around just humming, really yeah Blue is that?
Speaker 2: It's pretty nice. I really like this.
Speaker 3: I wasn't that keen on velveteen when it came out.
I didn't dislike it, but similar, I actually have more
of a I have more of a place in my
heart for this. But I think you do pair And
this is the third ie blind contingents y again and
just just.
Speaker 2: Just straight up power pop as well. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Well when that stuff's good, I absolutely love it.
Speaker 3: And Velveting when that was getting the buzz and people
saying it was the best home with our start and
age or whatever, I didn't feel that way. I felt,
you know, at odds in a sense. But I don't
know if I've changed or this is markedly better, but
they're just the pack in the tunes this time. Like
this band fundamentally, they understand pop better than pretty much
anyone else who's doing this at the moment. I think
a lot of rock bands they think maybe pop music
is easy or it's just a master of how simple
and straightforard can you make something? And these songs are
simple and straightforward, but they're good pop songs by I
think pretty much any standard it's not put good pop
for a rock band. Like fundamentally, these are I would say,
super summary, sugary, fluffy, pink cloud pop songs. But because
every single one of them is of really high quality,
you don't really need anything else. And I think ten
out of the ten songs work excellently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say I would kill for some fucking
variety on this thing sometimes because every song has the
same like clipped nineties guitar chords. Every song is almost
exactly three minutes. They're almost all exactly the same pace,
which is really the biggest problem. Really, they're so straightforward,
just rinse, repeat pop songs to a tea. Nothing ever
out of line, no room for any danger or and
predictability or even that much feeling like a band really
like it's just really hot off the press is slickly produced,
unadulterated pop rock. I don't think I need a thirty
minute album of this as much as I didn't need
a fifteen minute EP, you know, because it's so unadventurous
in its one mode of comfort.
Speaker 2: But it is all nice, you know.
Speaker 1: And the bit where they appeal to me the most
is there's a couple songs where they introduce more of
like these eighties new wavy guitars a little bit in
middle of summer, particularly the title track. They go full
like Manchester jangle pop yeah on that song, and it's
like the chameleons have turned up and I'm like, oh yeah, cool,
I needed that. I'll remember that song where they do
that rather than you know, the tenth chorus like that.
Speaker 5: That's fair.
Speaker 4: I mean I think like that, like there is you know,
there's like the really minimalist lower songs and then the
slightly more upbeat poppy songs.
Speaker 5: But it's not you know, it's not a like adventurous
prog album.
Speaker 4: But for me, thirty minutes of this is perfect because
I'm just so yeah, I'm just so willing to get
swept up in those melody is that I am happy
to kind of like keep gorging on this and have
as much again and again. Like if there was you know,
more tracks and some of them would then maybe become
a bit forgetable. But I think because it's just ten
tracks and they all hear, I think this alum does
its job spectacularly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Pony clearly curse and I hope that was all
the choruses that you could want. Because next we go
to Cryptic Shift, who have released their album this Friday
called over Space and super Time. Boy did they title
that appropriately? And tell you what, what was already a
jam packed month for big reviews, it was a hell
of a task to jamming this monster in as well.
But in terms of you know, big releases for the underround,
we didn't want to miss this one out because Cryptic
Shift are I think undoubtedly one of the names that
you're gonna hear being thrown around a little bit this year.
Speaker 2: This bound are from Leeds.
Speaker 1: They're already well on their way to being internationally renowned
in the space of you know, if you are a
fan of Two Mold and Blood Incantation and Artificial Brain,
that kind of spacey progressive death metal. The cover art
is very obviously done by the guy who does the
Two Mold stuff. Then you are absolutely who this is
aimed at. But also you know, like voive od and
sort of you know, high tech thrash metal. Also, they
put out their debut album in twenty twenty, and it
was four songs long, with the first song being over
twenty five minutes a full side of vinyl filler. So,
you know, pretty bold for a debut that was six
years ago. And I have wondered a few times, like
I wonder where Cryptic Shift went, and they were kind
of like buzzy band, you know, five six years ago.
I guess now we know where they went what they
had been doing in pure breadth and ambition. This is
possibly the girthiest album we will review this year, which
is why I really wanted to carve the space for it.
Time intensive as it is, this is five tracks almost
eighty minutes long. It is absurd. The songs range from
nine minutes at shortest to twenty nine minutes, and besides
the four members of the band, there's one credited guest
music on this album, which is Mike Browning from the
classic space deaf band Nocturnus on theremin And I think
that should tell you the type of album that you're
dealing with. If you are a space prog death metal head,
this is like quite simply your overwhelming feast this year,
so much so that you're quite likely to be sick
at the end of it because it's too much.
Speaker 2: This is like I was not braced for this stuff.
I was not braced.
Speaker 3: Like like you say, there's there's a fair amount of
this stuff around now, especially like the sort of post
blood and cantation wave, but.
Speaker 2: Like, oh yeah, it's been all the rage for ten
years now.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the thing then is what are you going to
do to stand out? And the best bands all kind
of have their flavor blood and cantation. For me, the
thing that really stands about them is their understanding of
progressive rock from the seventies is better than anyone else's,
and they can write stuff in that style, which is
as good as bands from back in the day. Horrendous.
It's just like party starting like riffs and lead parts.
Two Mold have that just amazing dexterity of playing where
it's it's just lovely to listen to. Cryptic Shift have
lost their minds? Is that is basically their contribution to
the scene is we are the most mad.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The obvious, obvious separation between this and any number of
those other big, ambitious prog death albums that we've reviewed
in the last few years is just how much this
is one that will separate the absolute obsessives for this
stuff and managing to get a broader audience over with it,
because this is a niche, nerdy album and it is
fucking absurd. If you go look at the track list
as it is laid out on their band camp, with
the long songs broken up into their listed movements as well,
it is such word sids like this is a band
with no concern for restraint. The third things you hear
on Cryogenically Frozen are just straight up like Alan Holdsworth
cynic style jazz fuse and noodling, and then you have
some minutes following that of like spaceship sound effects, and
then you get to the tight, palm muting kind of
thrash metal picking where it's like okay, we're off and
already like on their first album, I was in the
camp of thinking Cryptic Shift were you know, pretty good
rather than like really falling for them, because there's something
holding your arm's length about them, Like it's so overwhelmingly
tech that it didn't fully connect with my Like Monkey
Brain Side and this album, maybe it's a bit better
just because they've gone so whole hog into being outrageous
and ridiculous with it. But it's it's just hilariously overwhelming,
and it's it's sort of it's the buy in and
the barrier to this album. Like this album is interesting
to talk about because there's absolutely no restraint. This album
is off putting because there's absolutely no restraint, Like it's
both the warning and the cell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like this record, you know, like I say, going
into it unprimed for what it was going to be.
It blew my head off. I was absolutely bowled over
by it, and not in the same way that those
other bands will talk about with some of their recent
records and how much I've loved them. I can't wait
for this to end just so I can put it
on again because I'm so madly in love with it.
This is a bit more of you better have had
a good breakfast, You've had a good night's sleep, you know,
roll your shoulders and crack your knuckles and kind of
try to stay in the park, try and keep.
Speaker 2: Up with it.
Speaker 3: It's not, it's not it's necessarily as enjoyable as those
records are. But this thing is fascinating and I've listened
to it. I've only managed to listen to it a
couple of times, but on each one I get more
and more out of it. But there was such a
feast on this record. There is so much to go at.
There is so many wild turns, and so so little
use of repetition. Considering how long these songs are, we
are a long way from being able to unravel this.
Speaker 2: I suspect, Sam, what did you think of Cryptic Shift?
Speaker 5: So, look, I've come a long way. Like I love
that two old record Blood and can Dat some think
are amazing.
Speaker 4: You got me into Imperial Triumphant like like I have
come along way with this like and look, no disrepect
to the guys in Crypto Shift, Like my opinion on
your album is irrelevant, I promise you, because this is
I am. This is not my thing you Like, I
was just going mad about the Pony record and how
that is just like pure Bliss.
Speaker 5: I hated this. I hated every second of this.
Speaker 1: Look.
Speaker 4: But I like my jazz fusion death metal shit a
bit more immediately like gold Star. I like my like
space age prog metal to have like gorgeous melodies like
two Mold or to have that kind of like pure
proga adventure.
Speaker 5: And again I don't want to.
Speaker 4: Throw out like the blooding contention comparison to something that's
an unfair bar to compare any band too, because they
have like that that that album is so clearly like
the sort of monolith for this sort of thing. And
fair play to Cryptic Shift. You have gone, we are
going to out mental all these bands. I have managed
this in this album in full, from front of front
of back. On the first few goes it, I had
to stop. I had to kind of take a break.
That twenty nine minute song like Time Stood Still, which.
Speaker 2: Is like track two as well as Still.
Speaker 4: That song is an hour long, Like I like fair Enough,
you know, insane musicianship like all over this. I don't like,
I don't want to talk down this album because I'm
not like, I'm not like in the position about this album.
Speaker 5: But I just want to send my piece like this
is just so not for me, Like I was.
Speaker 4: I even said to you in the film, was like, look,
you got me into Imperial Trump and you needed a
new enemy for me, and you found it in Cryptic Shift,
and I'm happy to hand over to you two for
this because it just I just completely bounce off. Is that,
like I have nothing to add to the conversation, and
I know I feel it's now that I don't even
feel any kind of like isn't it fun to say
I hate this?
Speaker 5: Because I'm like it just is.
Speaker 2: I think it's funny. That's why.
Speaker 5: I feel bad for the band almost for me to
just be like, I fucking hate this. I think this
is rubber. It's really not. But it's just so just
it's just too much for me to handle. I was
like like I got nothing. I'm really sorry.
Speaker 4: Like I was like, like, do you know what thing
Like if it was that twenty minute song and maybe
like one or twelve songs, I could maybe just about
process this. But when that twenty minutes song finishes and
we are halfway through the album, I was like, Jesus fuck,
this is this is too much for me to handle.
I've gotta I'm gonna take a break, so I'm happy
to throw over to you to to talk about the
insane journey that is this Cryptics Gift album.
Speaker 2: Thank you for your service in a way, Sam, and
I mean this in the best way possible.
Speaker 3: You coming on and saying how much you despise it
is in a way the best review we could give it,
because all that stuff was saying like Imperial Triumphant and
Bloodying Tentations, Like the way those bands, despite doing something
so you know, obtuse and difficult and off putting, managed
to have that crossover thing.
Speaker 2: There's a stripe out there, who yeah, who for them?
Speaker 3: They might look at blood in Cantation or Impero Triumphant
and think, oh, you know it's that's that's not the
real mental stuff. Like it gets way more mental than that.
And if you can want to say that I like
those bands and this is way too much, I think
Cryptic Shift will be chuffed with that, because I don't
suspect they're making this record hoping to win over any
you know, part timers in this thing, like this is
for them and them alone, and it's absolutely off its rocker.
This thing, like the things it starts from a mental
place that space prog death metal is already an obtuse
and weird thing, and the things they're put like that.
Just I was got writing stuff down as it came
to me, Like this bit sounds like sixth This bit
sounds like Buckehead where you're on he's playing a Gorgut song.
Speaker 2: It's so I think.
Speaker 3: The other thing about it is it's not just that
it's complicated, it's that it's so much of it is nauseating.
Like when they solo, they.
Speaker 2: Shriek and it's so shrill, and it's like you kind
of got it, guys, you pace yourselves. We've got a
long way to go, like we throw us some bones here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like I said, I wanted to make sure
we got some reviews because it's it's bold, isn't it,
you know? And it's like it is certainly it's a
benchmark in metal this year for something.
Speaker 2: Let it be known. I think this record has major
fucking problems. Like I'm not just.
Speaker 1: Proclaiming because this is such a like ridiculous fucking monolith
of a record that it's automatically objectively the best thing
or whatever. Like I think this record has fucking some
downfalls to put it lightly, but I wanted to put
it in because it's bold and it's interesting, you know,
and it is like often quite thrilling, like the I mean,
the first song, the nine minute introduction is it's the
easiest cell on the record, right, and that is like
a you know, full throttle blasting the g force in
your face. It's great nutty bass playing throughout obviously, and
then you get to the second fucking song, which again
all the titles are just you know, as I said,
sort of sci fi word gibberish, and you go, okay, yeah,
you were dropping us in easy at first? Do you
get flashes of almost like what you're saying about horrendous?
I was like, you know, just like horns up metal
rifts that you get, you get flashes of them. There's
one that comes six and a half minutes into that
pick up on.
Speaker 5: That rift, and that is rocking six minutes in rocking riff.
Speaker 1: It's it's a sick part and it's a real relief
because prior to that you were like a lobster being
slowly submerged into a pot of boiling space jazz. You
get that lifeline, it's like, oh, we're off and it is.
It's an extremelessen not necessarily for how you know, scathing
or heavy it is sometimes, but just for drowning you
in so much like weird o jazz death that you
come up the other side not really knowing what a
rift sounds like anymore. I liked that the vocal goes
beyond like pure guttural death metal and into this sort
of like higher yelp. A lot of the time it
reminds me of this more kind of you know, sort
of unhinged violent metal edge again, maybe comparable to bands
that horrendous and stuff like that. There's a manic sensibilit
that helps give it, even in its most floating, you know,
floating in the void moments, some kind of vitality to it.
There's a guitar silo thirteen minutes in to that song,
and he just hits this out right before it, which
is really great, and you get these like daft wretches
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: And when they do hit these.
Speaker 1: Moments of real head banging relief. Again, they're still technical, involved,
intricate riffs. They feel brilliant those parts, maybe because it
is I say, you know, you've been given like a
delightful piece of cheese after being waterboarded previously. You know,
that's kind of what they're like. But you get those
reps and you go like, oh my god, this is
so bright and fun and sweet and these type parts.
But then another movement will come in, of course, and
there's a part in the last third of that song
that's just like extended, like stretching an elastic band of
feedback and noise to see kind of where it'll release
and go to again. There's another track that's about ten
minutes long called Hyperspace Topography, which is another merely you know,
thrashing song, and that's you know they are. On any
other records, those will be like fucking hell, look at
these like labyrinthine structural things. On this they are the
most just like purely alive songs on the record, rather
than you know, the marathons on them. You have fucking
gurgly distorted robot voices in it, so many guitar ideas.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 1: This record I think does face a serious problem in
that it is so stylistically one note throughout this whole
megapackage that it does wear itself out, no doubt. I again,
I admire how absolutely unconcerned with making itself pallable it is,
and it is again, this is for people who have
dined on so much Techi cosmic space death that they
kind of want that extra challenge of a eighty minute
like again holding you as at arm's length as you
possibly can to try and break inside of it. It's
indulgent to an absolute extreme. And it's only really for
the biggest nerds of this style that does it even
necessarily have to be a criticism. Again, if that is you,
you know, if you want that, I'm just noting it
as an observation. Obviously, most people will be alienated by
this and the thing that this band lack most of all.
They've got all of the incredible playing, they've got the
incredible tones, all of that. It's discipline, you know. And
I did find myself listening to the final track, the
twenty minute title track, and going aside from the bit
when Mike brown In plays the theoremine, is there anything
being added to the album at this stage that hasn't
really already been covered? And I think a more seasoned band,
again not on their second album, I think would go,
you know, converge. I'm going to do that right, like
there would go, we're threatening to make ourselves redundant. Here,
let's restructure. The fact is, in a month with this
many reviews, as you were saying, like we are, you
probably need to listen to this only obsessively for like
a month straight, just to break the surface of how
these songs actually work, you know, and in the real
world that's not how we've been able to do it.
But if you can, and you can just tunnel vision
on this, my fucking monster, it might be your new possession.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think to compare them to a prog band, like
someone like Pink Floyd, you know, at their absolute peak
in the seventies, they were writing long, involved, complicated songs,
but they were fundamentally brilliant songs. A song like Dogs
has to be seventeen minutes long, but it feels naturally.
It doesn't feel like it's just you know, it's lost itself,
but you'll know because you've gone down the rabbit hole recently.
Speaker 5: Poem.
Speaker 2: But like not all Pink Floyd is that good. This
is cryptic shifting. That um a gummer, hero, Yeah, this
is a gummer.
Speaker 3: Like you kind of have to like the fact that
some of it's bullshit in order to get past it.
That's kind of like what I had to adjust to
with this, recognized that there are parts of this which
sonically that they're may be incredibly impressive. I don't know
how much I'm enjoying, like overspace and super time. I
was really starting to get that ear fatigue towards the end,
but like six minutes in there's just that squalling noise
and it's like it's like going through the stargate. You
just pin to your seat and it's a wild and
unexpected and just disarming move that it wakes you up
and unnerves you. But thinking about later, I was going like,
was I enjoying that? Like?
Speaker 2: Did I actually was? I was? I pleased by that sensation.
Speaker 3: So for me, it's like I said, I think it's
a fascinating record, and I kind of like how you
say undisciplined, I just think like unruly, like it just
they do not care, but they're willing themselves how far
can we push this? Let's push it further and further
and further. They're going in the opposite direction of how
do we make this better? And you know, more concise
at least right now, it hasn't invited that I need to, like,
if I want to understand this record, it right now
does feel more like a task or a chure than
something i'll than something that I'll just arrive at by
obsessibly wanting to listen to it again and again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm completely on the same page, but
I do think what you just said about, you know,
undisciplined versus unruly, it is the like I was saying,
it's the trade off of the record. It's kind of
what it is built on to, you know, make it
interesting to you as much as it is the thing
that could push you out. And it is the prism
that you look at it from in that way, because
I think about, you know, like a Cynic are an
obvious band who are one of the progenitors of this,
and Cynic albums are thirty five minutes long, and you're
not gonna make a better jazz fusion death metal album
than Focus or Trace It in Air in that kind
of package right where they mastered the fitting of that
universe into a tight, sticky package like that. So if
you're going to try and add something to that conversation,
go completely the other way and go as fucking maximalist
as you can with it, and it's not going to
lend itself to being as listenable. I do think this
album is so excessive. Obviously, it's not really prying to
do anything but to be the most absurd ott tech
space thrash album it could be. And you can compare
it to you know, the other albums of more Magnetude
to have come from this world of late, the obvious
candidates and the things that they do that I think
this album doesn't reach, despite being twice the length of
most of them. Despite this albums in sane girth, like
I was saying, it is mostly almost entirely in the
realm of this like newly jazz meets tech space, you
know death that's just stretched to an absolute breaking point
that I don't find this album, you know, it doesn't
reach that transcendence point because, amongst other things, it's sonically
and stylistically very similar throughout its whole runtime, and it
comes off more you know, salady as a result of that.
But at the same time, I step back and I
look at it and maybe there is something to you know,
I don't feel that this is a you know, an
undeniable moment of something really spectacular and special and breathtaking,
just because it is objectively the most music and the
biggest undertaking that we've taken on this kind of music
of late. But I do think this album we will
remember as what is the most daft, over the top
thing to come out of that twenty twenties cosmic death
metal boom. It's not the best album it's produced, but
that might be the accolade that it holds onto and
it's hard to beat.
Speaker 2: I want someone to try.
Speaker 1: Imagine if we're in a couple months time with like, Okay,
now here's the one hundred minute I'm quitting the podcast.
Speaker 4: Like you've had you out and you've had your eighty
minute Space from Death Nightmare album.
Speaker 5: We're done for the year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you've had We've had two jazz metal freak out
albums in two months.
Speaker 5: Right, we have the fucking back and grilling album. Last month,
you've had your film, Like, we're done for the year. Okay,
you have played your cards too early. I don't care.
There's something that is like I am drawing the line.
Speaker 2: I find no more prog. What are we doing there?
Speaker 1: We've not heard our fill of prog for the episode
of Free because now we had a slot here where
you know, we've got a couple of albums here that
have come from Sam. We've got a slot we handed
over to you, Elliott, to put something forward, and you
went for a record which I had mentioned on you know,
a hyperblast released round up at the end of last
month Hallas and Panorama, and I was, I was a
little bit where about prog overkill this month? But after
Cryptic Shift, this is more like the comfy, easy listening
album of the Like I said, they've water boarded you
and here you've been given a lovely glass of red
wine to come down from the experience. So Helas tell
us about why this is the album that has been
you know, tickling your fancy in these past couple weeks.
Speaker 2: Well, kind of just touch a bit.
Speaker 3: We talk about prog quite a lot on this show nowadays,
which I suck it Losers, which I think is a
wonderful thing. And it is this thing of especially like
in extreme music, there's just more more of the tropes
of like seventies, prog have been rearing its head more
and more so it's like a natural number of that.
Speaker 2: But what we don't talk about is full Dad Prog,
which is a kind of that's very near and dear
to my heart.
Speaker 3: We might talk about it because it's in short segments
of other records, but unless I'm forgetting something, this might
be the first time, at least since I started doing
the show where we're talking about an unalloyed, unmitigated Dad
Prog record. Yeah, and I would not be that fuss
about bringing I listened to a handful of these albums
every year. I that sounds lovely, it's got an organ
I like it, but I don't think about bringing it
here or suggesting it. But this one I thought was
of such high quality that it warranted want a discussion.
Speaker 2: Yes, I agree.
Speaker 1: Halas they've been kicking around for about a decade, starting
off self styled as adventure rock in a case of
really appealing to the sam's out there. And if you know,
if there is a link to this, you know space
prog metal contingent that we've just been at. It's obviously
because after the success of absolutely Elsewhere in the last
eighteen months, you can go, Hey, the keyboardist from Halas
is the guy who plays all those sublime SyncE solos
on the Blooding contation album. But this band they've built
up I think, you know, a respectable cult audience where
they have become. I think maybe it's it's the right
circle you have.
Speaker 2: To be in.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's more of like a weird I know again,
cult underground circle more than like your prog magazine circle perhaps,
But from where I'm sitting, they're one of the most
kind of most recently appraised contemporary bands playing as you say,
full on nineteen seventies style prog rock. You know, like
between this and the Worm album, it's a big episode
for capes, isn't it. Like this is full capital P prog.
This is for if you are someone who shelled out
money to get a rush ticket this week, This albums
for you. This is for the floyd Heads. This is
for you know, Genesis fans, Yes, fans like fucking you,
Rayah Heap, wishbone Ash, you know, like this is as
a cheeseboards galore on this thing. For sure, I agree,
it happens to be pretty wonderful. And I despite you know,
I love a lot of the classic seventies prog. There
aren't a million albums every year in that style where
I go, that's really worthy of praise. This is one
of the only ones I would say of the last
like handful of years where I've gone, that Hellas album
is fucking outstanding for that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And it's it's partly the well, obviously entirely the quality
of the thing, but also I think as much as
there is a lot of this kind of prog around,
you mentioned Genesis there, and that's a band that doesn't
get sighted all that much, and I think it's because
maybe that was what they went on to be with
Phil Collins or whatever, but they're not seen as the
coolest like version of that seventies prog thing. Bands will
name drop and cite Pink Floyd and Kink Crimson and
you know, gentle gent emine like Jethro Tald and things
like that. But Gabrieleerrogenesis is one of my favorites of
that whole era of bands. I love that sound and
this band they kind of bring that. And it's again
you all the things we're saying about it being like
very nerdy, and there's capes and all that sort of
like moogs, theremin's daft percussion, dulcimer's bells, flutes, woodwin twenty
minute songs. If you just looked at it, like in
a if you're doing an autopsy of the record, you'd
think this is going to be totally unappealing and up
its own ars and not of interest to anyone outside
of those tight circles. But I think this is one
of the most purely agreeable records, yeah, that I've heard
in sometime. And maybe that's my own views like coloring
this and I'm not I'm showing my bias, but I
just love the sound of the thing. And I think
they write really excellent songs in a way that so
many of these bands don't seem to bother to. They
just seem to go, I've got a cape and I've
got a flute, so that'll fool them, Like Hallas write
excellent songs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is an album that really understands the lessons
and the traditions of the world that's come from you know.
I mean, I can't believe how many twenty plus minute
songs we've decided to fit into this episode, But this
starts with one of those, and again in a same
way we were saying about absolutely elsewhere, for example, where
we went like, you know, okay, it's these two twenty
minute songs, but they've done a really classic prog rock
thing of like, yeah, this is a side of vinyl
on each one, and the album experience is really like
the structure and the integrity of that is really maintained
despite how grand it went. Above The Continuum is one
of those it's full side of vinyl opening track, and
I think, you know, if you look at the previous
Hellass albums, this is their moment of like really spreading
their wings to attempt that you know, they've built up
their skill over their previous albums to then go, Okay,
let's have a crack at the big one. And then
you have Side B, which is four tracks of more
concise and more you know, specific per song in what
they're kind of going for, you know, breadth, and that's
actually kind of manageable for what it is. And this is,
you know, a lesson in can we capture this breadth
of imagination in your music but present it in a
way that is really effortlessly listenable. And that's what we
always say about, you know, the great Rush albums and
the great Pink Floyd albums and stuff like that, particularly
the ones where they have those like epic monolithic songs.
It's the albums themselves are actually pretty approachable. Wish You
Were Here is five songs, twenty one to twelve is
six songs, and the remaining five are about as long
collectively as the opening title track. That's how you structure
one of these things. And this album is like, that's
how you do it, you know. And it's a really cozy,
reassuring album. And that first fucking song is so good.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 1: They're Swedish, so they have the retro organic sound and
everything down perfectly, like that's their speciality over there, the
little keyboard chimes and stuff that give your first real
hook on their album, the mellotron you get.
Speaker 2: And then what I will say is when.
Speaker 1: You get one of these, like again, twenty minute prog
type songs, you think of, you know again, the great
Floyd Ones, and you think of, you know, stuff like echoes,
and they're so kind of wistful, and this has elements
of that. You don't expect those songs to start like
Prime Goblin in their tenebray era, going full eighties disco
pulse with the vocode of voice like it is a
prog epic, and it becomes more of a what you
would imagine as a typical prog epic. But when it
starts straight away your dadson, and it's just such a
great way to hook you into all the places that's
then gonna go.
Speaker 3: I was thrown off my shoes when that came in,
because you see, you see the twenty minutes that you
just go. I've got a space in my mind for
albums like this, ex Like twenty one twelve, Wish You Here, hemispheres.
You go, I know what these short songs are gonna
sound like. I know what this one's gonna be, and
you just you brace yourself for that. When this like
roars into being a pop song that sounds more like
Santana than it does fucking king Crimson, I was so
thrown off, and in the best way. And then there's
just these unbelievable twin leads over that disco beat, and
then when that gives way to like a waltzing version
of the Rainbow Road music, it's just there's so many
great ideas in this song, but you're quite right like it.
It's in total it's very expansive and experimental and tries
different things and throws stuff at you, but moment to moment,
it's just it's it's just a jam.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing song.
Speaker 1: Like somehow within the first three minutes, like you said,
you go from that like insane eighties goblin disco to
that like gorgeous seventies classic rock twin leads. As you're saying,
there's a guitar melody that hits about nine minutes in
that's full on like phantas movie score, gliding on the
clouds that it's it's like a motif that comes throughout
the song, and then it ended on the strings and stuff.
It's wonderful. They lace in that these like Gregorian choir
parts doing the like ascending a going up and down
straight just like magical shit. Then there's a synth part
that's straight out of Russia's subdivisions, and then a guitar
in the last five minutes that goes full fucking brave
soir Robin ran away. It's so good, Sam, Where did
we land on this one?
Speaker 2: Considering where we have been of late.
Speaker 5: I'm terrified. I'm about to have a seventy prog phase.
This is fucking great.
Speaker 4: And here's the thing you've touched on like my but again,
like this after listening to that fucking Cryptic Shift album,
I was like, so, here's the thing, right, the structure,
it's so important, the fact that this is like, you know,
forty eight minutes from that come up exactly. But it's
it's not a long album like Side at twenty minute epic. Again,
it's a really kind of like well paced, well fought out,
Like there's maybe a couple of minutes in the middle
of that first song where the new ling guitar parts
maybe get a little bit too meandering that I was
kind of like, Okay, come on, but the last five
minutes of that song, now we're cooking like that is
like so good. And also the beginning bit where again
you said like eighties com and I was like, this
is shit seventies sci fi movie soundtrack territory without those
kind of likes. And I was like, I'm in on
this because I've watched so many of those movies, like
and it sounds so of that and it just oddly comforting.
And I was like, I just found this this song
in particular, to be a nice journey to go on
that actually it does like kind of movement and you know,
you get the very kind of like storyteller bits where
it's like so up its own arts in the sort
of seventies prong way, but it is it just it fits.
It feels authentic. It's a little bit quaint, but it's
not like again, it is nerdy as hell, but they
clearly fucking love this shit. They clearly have studied these
And again, this is coming off the back of me
getting into Rush and then that includes kind of like
getting into seventies Rush. I like those albums now Like,
so I'm kind of like got enough of a toe
in on this stuff to not be completely put off.
Speaker 5: But it is, you know, like a.
Speaker 4: Really cool EPI Judes go on, and then Face of
an Angel hits, and I mean you get the fucking
multi five and coconut shells, horse galloping, then that riff
hits and they are strutting, we are rocking, We are
men rocking and rolling and with poper mediacy. Face of
an Angel's one of my favorite songs I've heard this year.
Speaker 5: I think that song is fucking ten out of ten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the first song I think is maybe their moment
as a band so far right. I think it's it's
a worthy album. On its own. Getting that song, I
need to be watching that band play it wearing a
cape yesterday, you know. But track two, how do you
follow up twenty one minutes of the most awe inspiring,
magical adventure rock that you can get. The answer is,
of course a nightfly orchestra style yacht rock wedding jam.
And that's what Piece of an Angel is, and that
fucking rocks because we love that around these parts.
Speaker 3: It's one of the like when you get one of
these prog epics, right, following up is always one of
the hardest things because it's like people might be tired,
you know, by the end of that song, they might
want to go and do something else or listen or whatever.
And that song above the continue being I was actually
I was thinking about this, so, what's the best bonafide
progressive rock epic of that length?
Speaker 2: What was the last one that was that that was
that good?
Speaker 3: And I was honestly thinking about to like Anesthetize by
Porcupine Tree, which like two thousand and seven, So it's
like they've set an unbelievable standard and I'm not totally
certain it's the best song on the record, because, like
you say, face of.
Speaker 2: An angel when that comes in and you go, that
is the same way the wind. It's just the same thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The way it feels is like, again, I listened to
a rush recently, but I had twenty one to twelve
one again as I as I want to do, and
that epic ens you know, we've assumed control, and you
just go like, there's nothing better than that in the world.
And then the rifts of Passage to Bangkok comes in
and you go like I'm sticking around, like yeah, I
mean more, that's the way this far and like you said,
the Monty Python horse Hoo's thing, and that's setting up
the funky beat. And then when the rift comes in
and it's like a horse naiz like it's Robert Plant
or something like. It's like the horse is course up
in what a jam this is? And you go for
all the reference points we were saying, like this is
like nerdy you know, sort of like loser music. It's
like this is like steely Dan Toto, dire Straits, like
that sort of spectrum, which I don't know how you
can be immune to that style of music's charms. And
this is one of the best songs in that style.
That we've ever talked about on this show. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: It doesn't overseell the chorus, but it's been in my
head for the last month.
Speaker 2: You know, faerb An Angel with the like it's just.
Speaker 1: It's effortlessly understatedly sticky and cool, like epitome of nineteen
seventies sunglasses on.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The first thing is I have a problem with so
much that sort of stuff. I've never kind of got
along on a lot of it.
Speaker 4: But I'm like, I feel it. Maybe this is just
me getting old. Maybe this is not in my face.
I've got to have a steely Dan FaZe coming up
or something like that. But this song, because it is
so catchy and so like it's just like it's not cool,
but it's so cool, like like I say, it's it's
it would have been the coolest song you could hear
in the seventies of the song Lsson all that shit
like and I'm like, I'm in with it. And the
same can be said for like the Emissary, Like it
is pop like rock, kind of immediate gratification but full
of these prog exts interestings that I'm like, I think
this is really quite again, it never feels like tired
in the fargic that the guitars always have loads of
pep to the melodies and the guitars which keeps so listenable.
Speaker 5: And again the solo like the solos are all kind
of like they.
Speaker 4: Propell the songs nicely, and I'm just just like, i
have to reconsider so many of my feelings.
Speaker 5: I'm like a lot of these music. I'm having such
a good time with this album in the moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it captures a great thing of like Side
A and SIDEB give you different experiences while feeling part
of the same world. Where the first track, the first
side obviously it's not extreme metal, but at the first
side I would go if you liked absolutely elsewhere by
blowing cantation, Yeah, you should hear that song because it's,
you know, a similar breadth of as we say, your
twenty one minute wonderful, luscious prog rock epic. If you
like the night Flight Orchestra, you should listen to side
B of this record because there's some of that standard
of classy pop rock from that era. Songwriting and what
brilliant connective threads to pull in like both of those,
you know, sides of the musical spectrum of what we
talk about. The Ennissary is like immacular thin Lizzy Devil's Blood,
Iron Maiden style twin guitars on this like running with
the devil pumpin rhythm section that still got room for
these like grand reverbi choral passages they have, and the
singer just in jet this really wonderful earth eternality. He
sounds like a wizard. It's brilliant. It really comes out
in Bestaeus, which is a piano ballad, and the piano
is so fucking old sounding. It sounds like it's from
eleven hundred a dy that piano, and I love that sound.
Speaker 5: At this point, I was like, is.
Speaker 4: Best It's gonna be point where I tap out and like, nah,
they they've done the work like it's it's musical theater.
Speaker 5: It's pure theater. It's so overblown, but there's so much
drama and I'm just.
Speaker 4: Kind of like just so like charmed by Hallas at
this point that I'm like, yeah, go off king like yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the final song at the summit is this
like wonderful classical guitar led ye oldie folk that when
it hits full pace is full organ Parping Deep Purple
album and how great is the collection of things that
we've just described across the second half of this record.
Speaker 3: I think that's the thing is again, talk talk how
like they understand why these these sorts of records work
and why with some of them don't. And it's if
you have a big epic song that's obviously gonna overshadow
everything else of the records, so you have to make
the other ones a good songs. But obviously like diverse,
like you you look at metal and echoes is the
thing that leaps out. But you can also go, well,
I know which one's fear less, I know which one's shameless,
I know which one's sandrop like. They have different they
bring different flavors, and each of the songs on side
B of this record is totally distinct. There's no redundancy
in the programming. Where you know, we said all the
abou facebook age of the Emissary, it sounds like sort
of post Deo Rainbow like Fire of Unknown Origin Boyster
cul It's just a bit more rocking than the record best.
Speaker 2: Just again, every classic prog record.
Speaker 3: Needs a daft overall little ballad, such a song that
reminds me of Martin Prince from The Simpsons and that song,
and as soon as it came, I got we are
ticking all the boxes.
Speaker 2: I'm absolutely loving this.
Speaker 3: And then, like you say, when at the Summit comes in,
which of the sort of these songs inside b is
you know, less straightforward and naturally coherent then the ones
that doing next to it. It's a bit more off
the wall. But it's a great crescendo to the record
because it has so much energy. And I said when
they almost come in, just they're still throwing fun ideas
as they're going out the door. The thing you said
earlier about Converge being comfortably the best alm of the
year so far is absolutely true.
Speaker 2: Silver Medal. I've got to say it's allas and I am.
I'm head over heels for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so nerdy laying out how it sounds, but
if you appreciate attention to detail in production and in songcraft,
I think you just have to give this album in
order of respect. You know, if you want to hear
some classic prog rock from guys who are like absolutely
on the top of their game right now. Instrumentally, compositionally,
it's just beautifully done. You gotta get on it if
you want to see him live as well. They've just
been announced for Cosmic Vibration Festival in Sheffield for this
August or a bill with like Final Dosa play on
that festival. It's brilliant, So dive in to the prog
pool this month of all months, for sure. Hallas Panora
is the name of that album. Finally, Sam, we've asked
a lot of you this month, so we've sandwiched all
of that prog not only with Pony earlier, but finally,
A brief blast from the hardcore world Killing Pace and
HCPM is our final album review this month. Apparently the
HCPM stands for hardcore Punk Metal, which is subjectively quite funny,
but I guess it gives you a clue as to
the genre crossover kind of message they're going for. Maybe
we name dropped this one last week, but it's the
record from you know, the mosh world that seems to
have gone down well this past or a week or so.
So wherever these guys come from, Uh, this one that.
Speaker 5: Has kind of just came out.
Speaker 4: No, I've not like had loads of like back on
the band. I just kind of saw buzz around it.
It's on like you're on the buzzy hardcore labels and
the one's gonna.
Speaker 5: Like killing Pace. There the hardest band around right now,
get on board. So I was like, great, it's.
Speaker 4: Time to shove those prog nerds into the locker and
steal their money for just like seventeen minutes of the
most horrid, evil, violent.
Speaker 5: Hardcore you can get. Like again, this album it does
exactly a way it does kind of exactly. It's on
the tin there. There's nothing revolutionary or knew about this.
Speaker 4: But if you just want, like if you like Nails
and any band that sounds hard and horrible, killing Pace,
do it in seventeen minutes and like again, like you
hit play it and you get those squawlling guitars before
that buzz or IF's and then you know what this
sound sounds like. And it just does that again and
again and again and that constant hit fucking rips.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think you'll find if the hap
CPM stood for Hardcore Prog Medal, then this would be
a superior album. But no, I was quite pleased to
find that. You know, there's lots of stuff that's trend
in hardcore, you know, that is often quite sort of
mid pace, beat downy type music.
Speaker 2: Hearing something like this that's got.
Speaker 1: So much pace in it really like, I don't know
I needed that at the exact moment when it arrived,
because this album is borderline power violence. Seems like the
wrong word maybe, but because it doesn't sound like you know,
drop dead, but that sort of weekend Natcho's nail style waitupcre.
Speaker 5: And power violence in the kind of the hardcore approach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that card's super heavy, girthy, down tuned, but still
dealing in you know, short sharp shocks sort of power violence,
grindcore type stuff. There's more of that on this album
than I expected just from the kind of the word
around it. And when that happened, I was fully in
my happy zone of like, ah, yeah, I know what
this is. I'm down for that because this, I mean,
they sound like a band who nails rocked their shit.
You know, it sounds like that. They sound like a
band who that band fell in their laps and they
went right. Our musical path is you know, laid out
for us because stuff that is you know, kind of hardcore,
kind of metal, kind of power violence, all of that
at once.
Speaker 2: You know, as it says.
Speaker 1: The title track first of all, is fucking flying. The
drums are absolutely clattering, but really well produced as well
to be explosive in the way that you know Unsilent
Death is, for example. I think that's a major reference
point for if you would get into this. Do you
like that record, particularly when that song hits the mid
paced riff in the middle and it's the exact same
register of like Skeleton Poppy doing his little dance as
that era of thing, and then for the last fifteen
seconds of it, they lock into like a pure double
based roll and usher it in with a squealing dive bomb,
and it is, you know, a sub one minute thirty
song that has three clear sections in it that each
then pops off into the next. And you know, I
don't think this is revolutionary or you know, even necessarily
special an example, but it's just a good reminder of
the fundamentals of how raging this shit can be. And
you know, you put those tools in the right place
and the right order, you can very effectively destroy some stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I feel like.
Speaker 4: That dive from so at the end of the first round,
I was like, yeah, cool, I've got everyone on this
album in the first and ninety seconds and then Digital
Reservation kind of like really frashed and you can feel
that like grind pace and aggression. The drums sort of
like clattering about. The guitars can alternate between like just
in a really hard edge and then just like screaming
at you the beat down wash if at the end
it goes on like War Machine is so violent and intense,
like like only it doesn't give you any time to breathe.
It's so kind of like in your face and confrontational.
Like the vocals, there's no kind of like break on
melody them. He's just vomiting that e barking it the
entire time. But then again, you know end of war Machine,
you groove at the end of that. So they do
manage to like have distinct passages in these kind of
again ninety second crusty, grindy hardcore song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I didn't even bother really writing notes
for this one or anything. I just like stuck it on,
Like you say, as soon as that feedback comes in,
you got you. I don't don't need to write notes.
I don't think any of this is going to surprise me.
But as great as being surprised is being satisfied is
ultimately the name of the game. And putting this on
and first of all, I love that it come out
on Monday. That just feels so fitting. It's just like
Fridays are too upbeat. We need to come out of
the moments at most rage and despair. It's the Garfield
of hardcore albums. Put that on your fucking stick.
Speaker 2: In fact, you know that's a perfect thing because it is.
Speaker 3: It is a like Garfield, and like a Garfield Comics
is exactly the same, doesn't change, so perfect like it's yeah,
it's this thing just it goes as hard as hell.
It's super loud, super down tuned, and Meetian must again
that thing you're saying of there is something about the
sensation of something that's that heavy, also going that fast.
Speaker 2: It just it sounds like a killing machine.
Speaker 3: And yeah, you're right, like there's it's hard to explain
precisely why some bands have the extra bit of pixie
dust and some don't wear you know, you put this.
It's not necessarily even a an aesthetic thing. It's just
something in the air. Like Unsilent Death is just an
eleven out of ten record, and this isn't, but that's
not that's an unfair thing to do. Like in terms
of like the sheer sensation of it, it's excellent and
there are, like you said, there are more than enough
memorable moments where you know, for a few months, if
I fancy something of this stripe, there's a good chance
I go for this.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The moment that I was.
Speaker 1: Sold on this album was before i'd actually listened to it.
They've got all the features of you know, vocalists listed
in the track list. For some reason, this one's not
on the regular streaming list, but it was on their
on their band camp, I saw it listed as war
Machine featuring Antichrist. Siege Machine basically the hardest band on
the planet right now, and I thought, damn if this
is a hardcore band with their fingers in the war
metal pie and funnily a.
Speaker 2: Bit of that crossover.
Speaker 1: As I've said in the past when talking about anti
crities Machine, that I think they should and you know,
hardcore fans should look in that direction. Then that is
That's some credit as far as I'm concerned. And there's
that similarly awesome, demonic vocal excessiveness where together the vocals
they're just barking together just far in the middle of
it is fucking great. The drummer sounds like a human bicep.
The beginning of Mangled State when it does just that
absolute like blunt force impact fling snippets of blasts around
until eventually it lands on that crust beat again like suffer.
The blast out of it is so like Antichrist siege
machine via h C. You know, just like carpet bombing
you great mosh call in afflicted, the burn it down
motherfucker in the middle, really primal and pulled into the
gears as well, is one which comes close to that
nails level unstoppable force of just sending the fucking tanks
all together. You know.
Speaker 2: That groove is fucking awesome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they have that nails finger where like when they
do go slow and groovy, it is just oppressively heavy
and and scary worgon Like they don't do it often
because they're like a lot of the time it is
just all pace, you know, like suffer forty seven seconds
and it just grinds.
Speaker 5: Mangled State is that again all pace.
Speaker 4: Suppression kind of flips back and forth between like the
more kind of like violent tempos and then kind of
going a bit stompier and slow washing. But when they do,
like say, commit to a dirgy kind of like riff,
it's so like you like, predation is.
Speaker 5: The one where like that is lumbering and oppressive and
it actually just kind.
Speaker 4: Of like build some moods kind of like almost like
the extended mo wash into it on the record, but
that like they are just so hard and nice and
when they do that that it is it keeps it
in the thing where that the eve when it slows down,
it doesn't lose any of the menace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and it's got you know, knuckle dragon beatdowns,
but the way they bounce off of the fast parts
often is what makes them compelling you And I'm gonna
stress again. The production is really good, like every instrument
is perfectly tuned for just kill, crush, destroy, And it's
very funny that this album is shorter than the second
longest song on the Cryptic Shift.
Speaker 5: That's what you need you like again, like this thing,
it doesn't need to be longer than seventy minutes. This
is exactly as something it needs to be. And some
bands less is more learn that lesson Yeah, lessift.
Speaker 1: Well it's the biggest ass kicking of any album this month,
and that's maybe what you need after all those flights
of fancy in space and in the castles and in
the forest. What a compelling, intriguing bunch of albums we've
got this month. I was looking forward to diving into
a bunch of those, and I've had a lot of
fun doing so let us know what you make of
you know, the albums from those titans like Converge and Mayhem,
but also do dive into Worm and Halass and Killing
Pace and Pony and all of these bands as well,
and let us know what you think about those as well,
because maybe you'll find your new favorite record. Cheers everybody
for being with us and joining us as we dive
through that bunch. We will be back next week here
on the show. We will be back in the next
week or so over on the Patreon as well, so
stay tuned.
Speaker 2: We'll be with you through all of that. Thank you everybody.
Speaker 5: Bye bye.