I had high hopes for this album. I really did. After Thursday’s last effort Common Existence, I was hoping for a shift away from the drab, monotone landscape that haunted the album and back to some melodic, solid hardcore akin to their earlier albums. So I cracked some cheap port, hit the play button and prayed for some retribution.Sadly though, the New Jersey band’s sixth long-player No Devolución, is much like its predecessor. A swirling paradeof muddy, over-dramatic over-loaded swells and washes of chords, drawn-out cloudy vocals with little deviation from a grey, flatline tone. It’s like something you would listen to in the gloomy darkness. While slowly weeping.
Every so often there are glimpses of the magic that made War All The time and Full Collapse such great heavy albums, though these are rare and far between. Songs such as Open Quotes, A Gun In The First Act and especially Turnpike Divides all manage to squeeze out some of the melody, tone and solid bounce of the band’s earlier albums, but these are only glimpses: the melody in a verse, chorus stomp or flourish in the bridge. Only the latter of these songs holds much weight for its full tenure. Most of the album however, sounds like glum, atonal drizzle. Like someone found a copy of Stabbing Westward’s self-titled album and decided to cover all the slow, boring songs; most evident in A Darker Forest and Sparks Against The Sun. Worse still are Empty Glass and Past And Future Ruins, both sounding like rejects from Death Cab For A Cutie’s Plans sessions, fused with misplaced Jeff Buckley sentimentalities; the latter song best described as hardcore Sigur Rös. Which excites no one.
Ultimately, whatever bravado was earned from the band’s earlier releases, it’s strangely not there now. At least their last album had the whiff of a directional shift without knowing any better. No Devolución playslike AFi’s Davey Havok and Jared Leto penning the soundtrack to Emo The Musical, starring a brooding Robert Pattinson and orchestrated by a Lithium-addled Trent Reznor. And I don’t know what’s worse: drowning myself in a sea of sorrows to understand it, or revelling in a once proud band sailing into a fading light of odd banality.
Best Track: Turnpike Divides
If You Like These, You’ll Like These: 30 Seconds To Mars 30 SECONDS TO MARS, Relationship Of Command AT THE DRIVE IN, Listening to The Cure’s Prayers For Rain and slowly rocking back and forth in a darkened room.
In A Word: Maudlin
