on the pulse - 2024 - #9 - bring me the horizon, knocked loose, rapsody, how to dress well, SUNDAYS, home counties, wade bowen, shane smith & the saints

Shane Smith & The Saints - Norther - I should have covered this months ago. I was sold on Shane Smith making indie country that went huge, and while their debut was solid with a lot of Turnpike Troubadours worship, Shane Smith’s voice deepened into a deep bluesy holler as they picked up a ponderous anthemic roil on their next albums, great stuff. So with their first in five years… for all of the enormity they can evoke in the galloping guitars to that fantastic fiddle, this should hit harder than it does. Maybe it’s Smith’s voice sounding so husky and weather-beaten that he doesn’t blend as well into the harmonies, maybe it’s an odd lack of dynamics - over a long runtime this album reaches bombastic intensity and doesn’t build many crescendos - or maybe if the writing had another gear, more visceral punch or complexity to match themes of living through the storm, be it war, love, and everything in between. Absolutely very good… but this storm needed a tornado warning.

Wade Bowen - Flyin - So I’ve been reviewing this Texas country veteran in some capacity since 2015 and his superb collaboration album with Randy Rogers, the first and probably still best entry in the Hold My Beer series and one of the best albums of 2015. Since then we’ve seen two more very good to great entries in that series, but also a few solo albums, notably the criminally underrated Solid Ground in 2018 and Somewhere Between The Secret And The Truth in 2022, which showed Bowen taking a more involved role behind the production boards… to unfortunately not the best results, leading to some of his best writing stranded behind production that couldn’t amplify its greatest strengths, and even then ‘Burnin’ Both Ends of the Bar’ still wound up as one of the best songs of that year! So I was a little concerned for this solo album to see him producing again with the same engineers, but hey, his consistency and high quality meant I wasn’t about to ignore this… And yeah, that’s a good thing, because Wade Bowen may have delivered his best project to date and one of the best albums of 2024. What’s so surprising is that Bowen is essentially playing to the same neotraditional Texas country formula down to including Eric Paslay and Lori McKenna as cowriters for that added punch, but the polish has been cranked up considerably, with an easy win coming in simply getting a more refined master around the warmer guitar twang and especially the vocal mix, where some well-placed multi-tracking and richer backing vocals punches up Bowen’s hooks considerably; given that he’s working with the same crew this time, I’m inclined to call it a case of just getting more comfortable self-producing, but I can hear the tangible improvement in the arrangements and mix! But if this was just a production improvement, this would likely be great but not reach a tier I’d call special, which is why I was very pleased to hear Bowen venture back towards some Solid Ground-esque experimentation: ‘Nothin But Texas’ has a ton of bluesy swagger with its organ and fat bassline, ‘Love Does What It Wants To’ is smoky as hell with its ominous guitar lead, where it could have very nearly read as a post-breakup stalking song if McKenna and Bowen hadn’t nailed the fine details, and ‘The Hardest Part’ has him try for a southern rock road song in a Chris Stapleton lane. And while I’ve never been wowed by Bowen’s singing, he’s throwing himself into these songs with some credible power, or in the case of ‘When I Wanna Be Wanted’ he matches Hillary Lindsey for a devastating ballad. And it plays into something I’ve remarked on before, compared to the machismo of his frequent partner Randy Rogers, Bowen is a little more sensitive and emotionally open in his performance and writing, so while he can nail the larger, anthemic moments like the opening title track as he lets the lower end ramp up, or ‘Friday Night’, where he was able to get former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and NFL announcer Troy Aikman to call a small town football game just for texture to set the scene of the song and make an otherwise conventional song feel so much bigger, some of his most powerful songs are when he strips it back. Take the sincere romance of ‘Mary Jane’ that for once has nothing to do with weed with striking guitar and pedal steel interplay, or the breakup ballad of ‘Two Hurts, One Stoned’ which has the opening line ‘I told her that I loved her and she just cried’ - god, that’s a line that struck close to home. And ‘When I Wanna Be Wanted’ is the sort of cheating song that can only be written well by mature adults, where both partners are stable if stagnant relationships but find a flicker of passion in cheating with each other, and the embers of sad chemistry just work so well. Even a song like ‘The Request’, which is pretty standard honkytonk country in the composition still can tug heartstrings with the fine details - a woman requests a heartache that she can dance to, he plays it, and then never sees her again, a moment where he can provide a bit of relief as a performer, and he has the maturity to not overplay it, which also translates to a song like ‘Someone Else’s Now’, which falls in the same lane as Luke Combs’ ‘Going, Going, Gone’, and that’s a high compliment. One of my critiques of Solid Ground was that it could play a little too safe with the writing in its sense of detail, and while I think some of the weaker moments here fall into that territory like ‘Rainin On Me’, with Bowen improving as a performer and showing self-aware maturity in his framing, it allows a closing ballad like ‘Hidin Behind This Microphone’ to hit hard as hell, aware of the emotional cost of that performance and the duty to keep delivering; for as much as the music takes out of him, there’s a lonely hope that it heals him in the end, or at least beats back the fear. In short… there’s a part of me still floored that Wade Bowen delivered so strongly across the board, taking everything I knew he could do well and not just cleaning up the fine details but also amplifying its heartfelt power - absolutely stellar neotraditional Texas country that absolutely knocked it out of the park… handily one of the best country records of 2024, if not of any genre. It will play better to an older audience, but there’s not a bad song here - it’s going to get slept on by way too many, please, check this out, it’s something special!

Home Counties - Exactly As It Seems - I’ve been sick of modern UK post-punk for a while: dour, backwards-looking, overwritten but often underthought, a lot of critically acclaimed acts fall there for me. So this full-length debut is a nice change of pace, reminiscent of brighter 2000s dancey post-punk with liberal Talking Heads worship, with contrasting male/female vocals, flashy guitarwork, funky bass, pulsating drums and drum machines, and whirring poppy keyboards that feel both clean and seedy. And that makes sense: thematically it hits the self-aware raging against late capitalism, highlighting just how culpable one feels participating in bad systems, music industry included, and how few will actually push for change as it all gets worse, especially if there’s a crumb for you to get by. It leads to this lingering sour dread I’m not sure the hooks punch past - keeps it from greatness for me - but if you want a bouncier post-punk flavor, this is really solid, give it a shot.

SUNDAYS - Giant Formula - The fact that SUNDAYS managed to deliver two of the best albums of their respective years with their debut in 2019 and follow-up in 2021 still blows my mind a bit to this day - lush and ethereal indie folk with irrepressible melodic hooks and a thematic complexity that deserve a lot of credit, first by tackling the clingy toxic positivity when one is using a relationship to overlook one’s deeper issues, and then flipping the script for how art can be used for that same deflection. And that had me wondering where their next project would go beyond deepening their rock impulses and continuing to work with producer Asger Techau, especially as they set such a high bar for themselves… which is why it frustrates me when after a lot of repeated listens, I’m just not as impressed with Giant Formula. And what’s exasperating is that - pardon the pun - the formula is intact, sonically this album is not far removed from SUNDAYS’ first two: still impeccably balanced acoustics with underrated basslines, still crisp sandy percussion, still touches of gauzy synth and the occasional bit of horns, still Magnus Jacobsen’s striking, willowy falsetto alongside excellent harmonies. And yet for all of this the melodies don’t quite have the consistent vibrancy, despite the production feeling glossier and bolder than ever - ‘Wasteland’ has a great hook with some nice horn accents around the smolder, the solo erupts well on ‘Lost In Babylon’, I like the groove interplay on the opening title track with great vocal harmonies, and the buildup on the closing track after the spare acoustics feels earned, the album at least starts and ends well. Maybe it’s the sense of momentum being a bit shakier, maybe it’s the acoustic pickup on cuts like ‘Savoury Sundays’ and especially ‘Forever Too Late’ feeling too tinny, or maybe it’s just the same issue I had with Temples’ third album when the sound is still solid but you’re hitting diminishing returns. Granted, I think some of this also falls on the writing and themes, and it’s probably bad timing on my part to highlight how this is my second review in a row discussing a folk-leaning project grappling with new parenthood, familial trauma, and existentialism. To SUNDAYS’ credit, I think this is better than the new How To Dress Well if only because the poetry feels more focused and robust, helped along by Jacobsen’s framing being a lot tighter in describing the messy emotionality in the relationships: the instability of describing being inside one’s love ‘like a wasteland’ has tangible layers in both instability and potential, as do the frustrations of miscommunication on ‘Lost In Babylon’; there’s a deeper yearning to this project in being tied to one’s rocky emotions and finding comfort in not knowing all the answers amidst time that doesn’t get bogged down in academia, there’s an emotional intelligence here I appreciate, even if there’s still more whinging projection on partners than there should be, even though with SUNDAYS that’s part of the territory. I think my larger issue is that compared to the last two albums it’s nowhere near as tightly focused in theme - which is to be expected, new parenthood and existentialism don’t exactly make for self-contained narratives, but when you also remove the sharper crescendos and tighter hooks, and without the sharper wit to deconstruct the more mundane observations, the sprawl just feels a bit less compelling. Again, I have to stress this is not a bad album - SUNDAYS’ Giant Formula has great moments, and if you’re simply taken by the sound, this is a very enjoyable listen - but it does feel like their weakest project to date. It’s still very good, if you like this brand of willowy indie folk and you’re looking for something a bit more atmospheric and high concept, this will certainly satisfy… but that giant formula may need a slight shakeup, all I’m saying.

How To Dress Well - I Am Towards You - At this point, I’m just not sure what to make of Tom Krell as an artist. I found inroads to his early indie R&B work, his pop pivot in 2016 with Care didn’t precisely work but I respected pieces of it, and The Anteroom was an abrupt swerve back into icy, ambient electronics that I wanted to like more than I do. So naturally the next thing to do after taking six years between albums and getting a Ph.D in philosophy - with his dissertation on the possibility of non-nihilistic metaphysics, oh boy - is to release this after getting disillusioned with academia for its nihilistic professionalization, which is similar to his disillusionment with the music industry after 2018; at least to me, it seems like there’s a pattern of getting frustrated with the commodification of art and philosophy where he seeks some intrinsic sacred value, which is quietly ironic to me because thematically I can feel a deep core of nihilism across both Care and The Anteroom, a moral paralysis that when combined with self-serving framing feels like he can become his own worst enemy. But hey, maybe with this he’s finally found a way out, and hence we have this album… and credit to him, it’s probably the most I’ve liked a How To Dress Well album in about ten year, but it’s also something utterly unlike his previous projects, where the sound splits between gauzy soft-focus indie folk with reverbed guitars, offbeat ambient electronics, field recordings, the loudest noise rock instrumentation he’s ever had with guitars crushed into noise, and still some traces of R&B in the buzzy drum machines, where patches remind me more of Iglooghost or Bon Iver’s 22, A Million. Despite some textural similarities with acts that have become more popular in the intervening years, I’d struggle to call this a “indie pop” album: if you get a hook at all it feels shaggy and incidental, a half-constructed motif as the songs continue to meander in misty spaces, where it’s not so much the project doesn’t have momentum but that it avoids momentum, you have to be willing to engage with it on its turn, be drawn into and become comfortable with a lack of clear definition, be willing to be taken by its strange swerves. And some of them I found pretty compelling - the oscillating guitars on ‘Contingency/Necessity (Modality of Fate)’ that would erupt into lo-fi blackgaze / bit-crushed explosion on ‘Crypt Sustain’, the horns across the fractured atmospheric acoustics of ‘nothingprayer’, the closing outro of ‘A Secret Within The Voice’ - even if you come to realize that every shudder and quake in the mix isn’t about to pay off any crescendo or dramatic change-up or sense of consistent groove for how much the bass is underserved, or how little Krell utilizes his gorgeous falsetto outside of his vocals being relentlessly smothered in effects. But that ties into how Krell has explained the themes, in how to position oneself towards something or someone of great import to you: not being prescriptive or definitive on that thing or person, but drawn in their wake, where amidst the broader expanse of time and a past/future we can never fully know, a choice to not limit oneself to a chosen, defined reality when the potential unknown can offer so much more. And thus the album shows what it means to embrace such a worldview: he’s drawn to personal connection all the more strongly, while conscious of the tighter you hold to people, the higher likelihood you wind up driving them away, questions of making right or wrong decisions are left unknowable in the biggest scheme of things, where it seems like even the most innocuous events could have greater import that you just can’t comprehend, and then avoiding a spiritual or deterministic prescription of what something might mean or why - ergo the lyrics are juxtapositions between the cosmic and bluntly mundane, trying to break past the limits of language and our flawed understandings of it, where providing description of direct meaning only shrinks what its emotive power can be… although you can tell this is still a struggle as Krell beholds the stark brutality of the modern world, where perhaps the continuity of life and connection is culmination enough to find transcendence, cycles of dissonance before reformation into harmony, where it shouldn’t even be surprising that this album ends with an ultrasound heartbeat. Now if everything I just described there sounds like some of the most frustrating philosophy you’ve spun across, and you don’t have time to indulge this pretension - or on the flip side, you’re able to immerse yourself in the sonic rapture… I honestly get both sides of it, but if I’m engaging sincerely with the philosophy and themes in execution, I have issues here. Part of this is the argument of practicality - in that your material conditions will impact your framing of metaphysics, and I’ve heard enough How To Dress Well albums to recognize that denial of responsibility and full agency can be enabled by this framing - and Krell has described himself as not being one for rewrites, and there’s hubris in the… let’s be snarky and call it faith that it'll coalesce and not come across like half-formed first drafts that are more resonant to him than anyone else. And while I can accept the metacommentary around the themes echoing in both engaging with this album and the world at large, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Krell is still trying to convince himself more than anyone, and I’m not as enamoured of the journey when denial of agency is intrinsic to the internal arc, it can start feeling trite even if there are metaphors I consistently like, specifically around the misunderstandings and miscommunications of language on ‘Contingency/Necessity (Modality of Fate)’ or ‘A Faint Glow Through A Window Of Thin Bone (That’s How My Fate Is Shown)’. But to summarize… if there’s one review where I’m thoroughly glad I got rid of scores, it’s here - thematically apropos, I would say. More than ever, Krell seems content to ask an audience to engage sincerely with very high concept material, and while I’ll quibble on philosophy and framing, it’s make or break on the execution, where I’m just not sure the immersion fully coalesced for me; not bad as distinctly in its own space. It also means any recommendation I give is heavily qualified: this is not a record you’re going to grasp on first or tenth listen in both sound and content, and even if you get to a comfort of understanding - or comfort in lack there of - I’m not sure it delivers a potent enough experience to pull it off. I do think it’s worth a proper chance, it certainly is a fascinating experiment… how comfortable you are with the margin of error in the execution is the deeper question.

Rapsody - Please Don’t Cry - It would feel like an obvious cliche to highlight that it’s been five years since Rapsody’s last album… but truth be told, it feels like it’s been longer; partially because of the pandemic which fundamentally broke perception of time, but also because I really did not connect with her 2019 album Eve; not that it was bad so much as it spoke to potential that hadn’t coalesced, a project that wanted to elevate Black women but very much within the confines of the established system, with words to challenge it… but only so far, really frustrating for a project with strong guest features and a lot of great production! Since then… well, it has been quiet: there were rumors of a fallout with 9th Wonder which is revealing of no production credits from him here and a few passing bars on ‘God’s Light’ but probably awkward given that she’s on his label cosigned with Roc Nation, she contemplated quitting rap altogether and moving on… but she pulled through and we got this, and it’s pretty great, even if I can say the title is as much of a challenge to the audience as it is an affirmation for her, because this is easily Rapsody’s most personal and introspective album to date… possibly her best! One thing you recognize very quickly is that this album is at a crossroads for Rapsody in themes and content: she’s acutely aware of how she’s perceived and has been received, that she’s discovered more Black men like her sound and approach than women and has gotten pushback in that space, called a pick-me and a hotep and given how she dresses and how she raps speculation was made on her sexuality on ‘Stand Tall’ - all of which feels insane to me knowing the subject matter of Eve and how it was framed specifically for the empowerment of Black women, but also not surprising when you encounter mainstream audiences that don’t bother to read deeper, plus a lot of systemic framing of what Black women in the mainstream are expected to rap about. But when you combine that with not seeing the crossover mainstream success, and how much value she’s placed in that validation, you can tell she took it really hard, listening to all of it and then figure out who she is on the other side, which feeds into some very personal stories. She talks about her faith, an affair with a married person, a time where she does experiment sexually with a woman and what potential feelings that could open up on the gorgeous ‘That One Time’, a stellar mature love song in ‘3:AM’ with a nice assist from Erykah Badu, and most strikingly where gets into her aunt’s struggle with dementia on ‘Loose Rocks’ - Rapsody has only improved as a more expressive rapper outside of bars and punchlines, and you can tell the anguish in touching on family issues really cuts through, especially if there’s anyone in your life you know going through something similar. What I think is the bigger step is when Rapsody allows herself to be seen as imperfect or less than an aspirational figure - which for a Black woman rapping in her forties near the mainstream who has played the hierarchical game as an MC is all the more daring - but where the humanistic framing, set up through a salon where her hair becomes a metaphor of her feelings and place around herself, allows her then to heal through it and keep growing, and then challenge some of those expectations thrust on her, like why men are more willing to accept her in this lane of hip-hop and not others on the smoky jazz of ‘Look What You’ve Done’. It’s why one of my favourite songs on the album is ‘A Ballad For Homegirls’ where she has a call with a sister asking for advice during a tenuous relationship, and the more streetwise friend giving her good advice is Baby Tate, and she’s great on it too! One thing that really resonates across this album is Rapsody’s affection for family and friend connections, finding solidarity, especially given how isolating it can be in this rap game especially when you’re underappreciated for stupid reasons; I have to wonder if she were to be alongside the new wave of women coming up in rap that sort of solidarity could be great, especially for a rapper like GloRilla who has been seeking it out! All of that said, there are still some limitations on Rapsody’s framing when it comes to larger societal issues - ‘He Shot Me’ explicitly examines the Breonna Taylor case, ‘Never Enough’ engages in some real critique of bad power structures, but she encounters immediate pushback on that song with ‘you need to figure out your own issues first’… and you can do both, it speaks to a lingering frustration with Eve and the framing continuing, but I’m more forgiving here because Rapsody’s internal journey is the thematic core of the album. Of course, then comes the execution, where over another extended runtime Rapsody is going to try to push her sound - she still works with her usual stable of producers, but minus 9th Wonder you can tell there’s a desire to get more flexible and adventurous, like the shuddering bassy knock of ‘Asteroids’, the swaggering g-funk synth of ‘DND’ where I was amused to hear the Biggie flip and chopped’n’screwed outro, a distorted rap rock adventure on ‘Diary of a Mad Bitch’ that I really liked but on its grimier sound and hook will probably be contentious - although probably not as much as ‘Lonely Women’ has her acting out a masturbation scene - and a diversion near reggae on ‘Never Enough’ and ‘God’s Light’ and that I wish connected better than they did. I’ve got other quibbles: Rapsody’s adventures near trap are solid and well-intentioned as she frames them as deflective from getting more deep, a necessary balm to the pain, which can feel a bit reductive, I’m not wild about the chipmunk gospel vocals of ‘Faith’, and I don’t know why Lil Wayne sounded like he was rapping through a speakerphone on ‘Raw’, a track I otherwise think is great with a terrific swaggering verse from Rapsody - the vocal mixing can feel a bit flattened on a few songs here, including that one. But overall, this is a really great album that’s already been slept on by a lot of folks - wonderfully diverse, introspective, with really smart metatextual observations, and for the longest Rapsody album to date, it doesn’t feel like it for me! It’s definitely a record that’ll play best to an older and more mature audience, and I still think there are more doors for Rapsody to open going forward, but this is a welcome sign that she’s getting closer with every step. A bit of a tearjerker, but for the best reasons possible - give this the time, and check it out!

Knocked Loose - You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To - Alright, it’s been a while since someone has thrown some mainstream-adjacent metalcore on my docket - I’ve long been on the record that it’s rarely my thing, the production and chugging riffs tend to cause a lot of it to run together, it’s not a genre that tends to stick well for me melodically. But Knocked Loose has been stacking up the critical acclaim in recent years for being the rare band that’s only gotten heavier with more fans and crossover, even treading near deathcore, so I did my deep dive to get familiar and while I quickly recognized they weren’t really my thing and the sound could feel one-note, their 2016 album Laugh Tracks was visceral and chunky so I at least grasped the appeal. I wasn’t as impressed by their 2019 sophomore album which felt a little overly clean for my tastes, but some of the atmospheric tricks worked on their 2021 EP and since this album runs less than a half hour, I figured I’d give it a proper shot… and this is one of those cases where it’s still not my thing, perhaps even less so given some of the production choices, but if you’re in the scene for this, the rebuttal would be ‘well, it’s supposed to be like this’ and I’m not sure I’d have an easy response. The biggest change comes with switching from Will Putney to Drew Fulk on production - who has been responsible for producing a lot of the radio-ready crossover metalcore, so I guess we have the answer how Knocked Loose got there - and from there we get a few expected shifts: the compression has been cranked even higher where the drums sound increasingly quantized and clanking, the basslines are given less definition and room to breathe, the guitar tones like overloud chunks of distortion to produce even sharper contrast with any atmospheric flourishes, and for Bryan Garris’ screamed vocals to sound more shrill and squawking than ever. All of which feel like explainable choices if you’re looking to deliver the most crushing riffs possible while helping the vocals punch through compared to the suffocating burly swells of Laugh Tracks, but while that album might have run together a little, it at least flattered their strengths more effectively for a meatier sound, especially in the low-end. And even then, most of these tracks I find most distinctive based upon something that’s outside of the metalcore breakdowns, like Poppy’s visceral screaming on ‘Suffocate’ or the ominous chugging of ‘The Calm That Keeps You Awake’ or the creeping rattling dread of ‘Take Me Home’ even if I think the ‘Over Three Hills’ was a bit gimmicky for the horror payoff - hell, there were hints of a more interesting warped melodic riff within ‘Blinding Faith’ of which I’d like to hear more! But sometimes it’s for the writing, which outside of the relentlessly downbeat themes of existential angst and alienation you get moments like the vindictive bassy venom across the tempo shifts of ‘Don’t Reach For Me’, or the anticapitalist rage of ‘Slaughterhouse 2’ with Motionless In White, where the question of dealing with loss on ‘Sit & Mourn’ eventually hits its bleakest conclusion, where the album title can wind up feeling like a curse than reassurance, this album ends on a very dark note. But as a whole… I can’t deny that if you have an ear for this sound, especially the stuff that tilts towards the mainstream, this’ll be up your alley - it’s not that for me, and by the standards of hardcore I like that builds those filthier riffs and breakdowns, I don’t expect I’ll revisit this often, but that’s on me - I know in the right lane this’ll be effective. Fans have probably already heard this, if you haven’t… ehh, it’s a short punishing listen, it’s worth a shot.

Bring Me The Horizon - POST-HUMAN: NeX GEn - And here I thought this was just going to be an overdue EP, not their longest album not counting that Music To Listen To… thing! But even though I’ve had a tempestuous relationship with Bring Me The Horizon, the buzz around this project at least had me intrigued - apparently internally there had been a lot of rumoured infighting surrounding the project’s direction between the heavier pivot from the last POST-HUMAN album to something more accessible, closer to borderline pop-punk, which got so bad that it led to the departure of Jordan Fish, their keyboardist and more importantly their long-time producer since That’s The Spirit. That, alongside with the discourse that even among fans seemed to call this a mess - just one they liked because of what it revealed, or just tolerated because it’s been four years since a new album - had me worried about this… and for good reason, because this is the Bring Me The Horizon album that finally wore out any patience and goodwill I was giving them. What’s most immediate with this project is that the infighting surrounding the band’s direction is sprayed violently across the album, as despite the painfully weak structure of the ‘(ost)’ instrumental segments full of jumbled samples, this is a band being violently torn between a closer return to metalcore and even their early deathcore, versus a jumbled blur of sanitized pop punk, emo, and even hyperpop that feels years behind the curve; it’s not just that this plays havoc on any attempt to establish a consistent tone, but the loss of Fish brings out the worst of both sounds. Where on the first POST-HUMAN I had issues with the overmixed gummy layers of synth slammed to the front alongside the riffs, leaving the entire groove section smothered at the back, here the riffs have no body, the drums are painfully underpowered when they’re not slammed through weedy programmed beats, and any interesting basslines might as well be gone, leaving a ‘full-force’ approach with even weaker dynamics and feeling incredibly compressed and top-heavy. And when the mix is so oversaturated with glassy splashes and pitch-shifting and all the synthetic layers dumped onto Oli Sykes’ voice and borderline electronicore glitch that was tacky fifteen years ago, the rock elements start running together remarkably fast over an extended runtime - for a band that’s trying so hard to feel anthemic and play for the live audience, there’s little in the way of distinct crescendos, for all of the poppier tones the melodic core can start feeling very recycled, down to ‘DArkSide’ lifting elements from Fall Out Boy. I’m on the fence of whether it’s worse for the heavier passages - Fish at least stuck around to co-produce the collab with Underoath ‘a bulleT w- my namE On’, which is at least credible compared to ‘AmEN!’ that somehow wastes both Lil Uzi Vert and Glassjaw in an overcaffeinated squealing mess, or that disaster with AURORA ‘​liMOusIne’, which does nothing to accentuate her quasi-mystical vibes and features some of the most embarrassing lyrics on this album, which is saying a lot! Speaking of which, the content - putting aside how any conceptual framework feels shaky at best, a fight between a cult of reprogramming and uniformity contrasted with the more raw ‘degenerate’ masses with some very lazy and basic occultism, the majority of it devolves Sykes’ usual targets for his rage: betrayal, unhealthy and obsessive relationships, struggles within therapy, relentless nihilistic self-loathing, where it feels like there’s a grabbag of iconography that’s been smeared over for anthemic impact, but little depth or expansion, made all the worse by every snippet of studio dialogue left in that exposes the cynical artifice. And… okay, I’m willing to accept that the wild tonal shifts, the raging inconsistency, the melodrama amped to eleven makes sense in some framing around dealing with mental health struggles, but when you combine a lack of coherent progression in theme, lyricism that feels vivid but painfully basic, and every moment that feels choreographed for the stadium singalong, it becomes hard to take seriously, especially when they fumble the execution so hard with any sense of ‘fun’. Look, there are salvageable moments - ‘Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd’ had the kinetic energy to sell a decent hook even if the breakdown felt painfully overmixed, the Underoath collab had some credible heaviness, and ‘DiE4u’ manages to tear itself out of the downward spiral with a credible riff and guitar solo, it’s probably the song I like most on the album - but as someone who has never been sold on this band, including having seen them live multiple times at festivals, this is more scattershot volume than impact, it’s throwing everything at the wall and praying for something that sticks in a half-baked concept and feeling too big to fail. At least with Sempiternal and That’s The Spirit I could grasp at solid fundamentals even if they weren’t my thing - this wants to be framed as ‘nex gen’ but feels dated, incoherently chasing trends, and woeful in execution. Not the worst thing I’ve heard this year, but it’s mediocre at best and pretty bad at worst - you can skip it.