The best new albums this week
The must have albums of right now
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Slipknot – The End, So Far (Roadrunner)
The challenging journey of Iowa metal collective, Slipknot, would have utterly destroyed most bands (multiple times) by now. The untimely passing of bassist Paul Gray, the messy firing of drummer Joey Jordison, who would also tragically pass just last year, along with the departure of percussionist Chris Fehn over internal monetary issues, had rendered the collective a third short of their nine core members.
With constant rumours of looming disbandment as well as several members stake in other projects, 2019’s vicious return to form, ‘We Are Not Your Kind’, was seen as a momentous rebirth, as well as a major surprise, with many under the assumption it would be the last project for the foreseeable future.
Fast forward three short years, and the nine return with their seventh, most sonically diverse offering since, ‘Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses’, complete with everything from nu-metal clusterbomb barrages (‘The Chapeltown Rag’), to prog spectacle (‘Yen’), with even moments of ethereal beauty like on the lush, slow burning opening track, ‘Adderall’.
What can seemingly be perceived as a lack of sonic focus, also feels very indicative of a victory lap of sorts, with the group running the gamut of all of their past experiments in tandem to create a highlight reel of everything Slipknot is capable of. Yes, this might mean unearthing aspects not as fondly remembered as others (looking at you Stone Sour radio rock chorus on penultimate cut, ‘De Sade’), but it also means bearing witness to some of the most intense, mammoth riffage and interlocking grooves that have been flexed since 2001’s despicably heavy high watermark, ‘Iowa’.
While some members including guitarist Jim Root and percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan, have openly expressed reservations with the final product’s deranged sprawl, those already indoctrinated into the cult will find so much reliable venom as well as shocking, riveting left turns. Even the trudging, doomgazing, ‘Medicine For The Dead’, is testament to, ‘The End, So Far’, serving as a more than worthy entry into the catalogue as well as a continuation of the vitality exuded since its predecessor.
ZB
Memotone – Clever Dog (Accidental Meetings)
If you’re hoping to get a firm grip on Memotone through his latest album, think again. The Bristol-based artist known as William Yates has been confounding for 10 years now, orbiting disparate parts of his home turf’s fertile scene without sticking in one space for too long. Many of the labels he’s associated with – Black Acre, Project: Mooncircle, Diskotopia – deal in varying shades of downtempo and dubstep, and perhaps that logically incubated Yates’ oddly blunted, shape-shifting constructions. You can tell there are genuine, musically trained chops folded into his repertoire, but his music also has that introspective, patchwork DAW-stitching quality that typifies the ill-defined beat scene in the 21st Century.
Clever Dog does nothing to clear up these befuddled matters, but neither does it need to. Landing on Accidental Meetings, an equally oddly shaped entity in existence for a little over a year, the album glides between sketches with the impulsive quality of someone too skilled and prolific for their own good. When every doodle yields a wonderful piece of art, what else should you do but stick them together? Clever Dog doesn’t appear to follow a particular narrative, but rather skips from scene to scene as though they were separate studies of musical possibilities.
The likes of ‘Day Slipping’ are more complex in their construction, with a micro beat shuffle carrying gleefully wonky jazz funk keys teetering between harmonic interplay and discordant, modal messing. It’s unhinged, and quite remarkable. On the other end of the spectrum, ‘The River Slows To A Stop’ is a patient piece revolving around sustained clarinet and drone. The tones are sometimes awkward or imperfect, but of course there’s sincerity in that quality as much as a virtuoso performance. ‘Sporeprint’ is a fantasy electronica construction with further woodwind ruminations and a subtly joyful delirium in its bones, while ‘Bloose’ tumbles off the edge into a detuned daytime delight, as though conjuring easy listening for the crumbling sanatorium.
There’s abundant olde worlde imagery which spills out of the Memotone sound, whether down to the patina of the production or the way he plays, but either way it’s confounding and compelling in the same breath of the omnipresent clarinet.
OW
City Of Caterpillar – Mystic Sisters (Relapse)
Post-rock-inflected underground screamo legends, City Of Caterpillar, left behind an immense legacy with their one self-titled full-length and slew of splits, EPs and compilation contributions.
After reuniting briefly in 2016 for a small run of shows, they would release the, ‘Driving Spain Up A Wall’, single; marking their first newly recorded piece of output in almost two decades, though the track had originally been crafted not long before their initial hiatus.
While many had held out hope that this would be more than a final gasp of breath from the absentee veterans, it’s only now in 2022, two full decades removed from their debut album, that, ‘Mystic Sisters’ arrives.
Returning to the well with life experience, sharpened skills, and a honed sense of purpose and focus, the material here is as tragically triumphant and cathartic as it was when these were just young men with the world in front of them. Now, the world surrounds, looms and suffocates in equal measure, and the sonic response is one of mesmerising chaos.
Bombastic riffs, frenetic shifts and anguished, howling, call-and-response vocals paint the proceedings like shotgun blasts, while the moments of tranquillity are equal parts grandiose and serene. From the unhinged nature of lead single, ‘Decider’, to the warming hues and operatic crescendo of the title-track, this is the sound and shape of a form of raw expression that was ahead of its time in the pioneering late 90s skramz scene.
With the upcoming Saetia reunion shows, the recent co-headline tour of pg.99 and Majority Rule, and now a new City Of Caterpillar full-length, it’s a truly unique moment in the scene to see so many highly influential acts, who only received their deserved praise and revery long after the fact, return to reward long-time devotees and the appreciative generations who’ve amassed since.
ZB
The Callous Daoboys – Celebrity Therapist (MNRK Music Group)
Atlanta, Georgia based mathcore experimentalists, The Callous Daoboys, made an integral impression on the scene with the release of their 2019 debut full-length, ‘Die On Mars’. With a sound rooted in the technical, cacophonous mayhem of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Botch and Converge, yet imbued with melodious tendencies that reach for the glinted heights of emotive pop-punk acts such as Panic! At The Disco or Fall Out Boy, there’s a strange bedfellows charm to their stylings that has pulled them out of their circle and cast their absurd moniker into more ample discussion.
‘Celebrity Therapist’ not only capitalises on the chaos of its predecessor, it climbs atop its shoulders and pushes it far beneath the surface, willing it to drown. From the swelling, glitched-out build of opener, ‘Violent Astrology’, comes frenetic, dissonant chords and a maelstrom of despicable screams, evoking The Chariot at their most unhinged. This is until the cosmic, meandering midpoint that gives way to a crooning hush with vocals very reminiscent of Brendan Urie before all kaleidoscopic hell once again ensues.
The breakneck switches from blasting mathematical hardcore to noodling emo-punk on, ‘Beautiful Dude Missile’, all the way to the theatrical nightmare fuel of grandiose closing track, ‘Star Baby’, that shimmers with ELO prog whimsy after a noise-grind frenzy, are all utterly indicative of a deep understanding of extremity, allowing for a caustic blend of dizzying strategy, with every microbe of space being expanded to its maximum capacity. This is the punk of today’s children, and we only have ourselves to blame.
ZB
Dialect – Advanced Myth (Rvng Intl)
With Advanced Myth, Rvng Intl invites us back into the first moves of Andrew PM Hunt’s journey as Dialect. Since the album was originally released in 2015 on Tasty Morsels, Hunt has snuck out further tapestries of electro-acoustic surrealism for 1080p, Dunes and finally Rvng Intl via 2021’s under~between, There’s a freedom to Hunt’s sound which makes it tricky to pinpoint a particular evolution – his music plays out like a scrapbook, often with certain findings pasted across separate pages until the edges become a little tricky to discern.
That’s particularly the case on Advanced Myth as we test its timelessness with a fresh listen seven years down the line. There’s an almost confessional quality to these sketches, where blissful string plucks and fuzzy synth drone coalesce, patient woodwind hums in a bath of reverb and there’s even space for some wavey arps to cut a sharp figure. The record is impulsive, but it stops short of being self-indulgent. That feels in part thanks to a fragility in the melodic choices Hunt makes – this is sensitive music that feels like it was a necessary outlet for the artist at the time, and through that emotional gradient there’s a consistency achieved, however much the style or sound might swerve from piece to piece.
OW
This week’s reviewers: Zach Buggy, Oli Warwick.