Mathcore, or whatever you want to call it, is a difficult thing to pull off well. Creating a blend of cascading, chaotic noise with no discernible structure and a disregard, in many ways, for the art of song writing, isn’t easy to execute in such a way that is both interesting and just a little bit cohesive, just so it still sounds like the same band, especially now that it’s been 13 years since “Calculating Infinity” tore down so many walls, and some much has happened in its wake.
Enter Brisbane’s Idylls who have delivered this scorching new album, “Farewell All Joy”. At a mere 21 minutes, it’s a searing listen of everything you expect (and don’t expect) from the description above. Despite not reinventing anything, Idylls are still a breath of fresh air in their little corner of hardcore.
Stay tuned for a full stream!…rest the review after the jump!
The album contains ten songs of infuriated tirades and meandering, foul riffing. Vocally the deafening shrieks and bellows range from high and low with the possessed sounds coming at you from all angles. The concoction is a heady one and at times can remind you of the assault of The Rodeo Idiot Engine, regarding the total recklessness of the band’s sound.
Opener “Funerals in Queensland” wastes absolutely no time whatsoever getting the sadistic ball rolling. Meanwhile, “Swine Virgins Utopiates” has that screeching and slicing guitar tone that’s a mainstay of the whole album, its piercing and snarling dissonance is what really gives this record its edge. “Violent Caves” is another example of that wailing guitar battering and is one the record’s definite highlights.
In keeping with the band’s yearning for keeping you on your toes, “Farewell All Joy” closes with an almost gentle, ambient number in “Susy”. It’s over four minutes long and as the spectral guitars begin you’re just waiting for that cacophony to kick in again… any second now. But it never comes and the album just ends. In other instances, you may feel robbed of your climactic conclusion but it’s oddly fulfilling, and part of the Idylls ideology to unleash the expected when they can, or in this case, slowly unravel.
“Farewell All Joy” is an impressive effort from these Aussies and surely only the first in a long line of strikes to come.
The album is available from the Idylls Bandcamp, both digitally and on LP…Stay tuned for a full stream!
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