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Loathe took six years to make this fourth album, explaining they wanted to make it very special. Accordingly, A Stranger to You ventures far from the Liverpudlians’ metalcore origins to create an odyssey of mixed and colliding genres. Punishing riffola and slabs of industrial noise coexist with balm-like electronics, acoustic guitars, shoegaze, tinkling jazz pianos and guest rapper Bucki Sugar’s spoken-word narratives (“ever forward, forever motion”). Other guests include vocalist Olli Appleyard from Leeds rockers Static Dress, production duo Nowhere2run and – most unlikely of all – slinky jazz-soul producer Jordan Rakei.
Precedents for this sort of radical metal departure include Deafheaven’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love and Linkin Park’s divisive but compelling A Thousand Suns, but, if anything, Loathe make even more musical handbrake turns. Block of Flats hurtles between gentle atmospherics and guttural vocals. The soaring Fortress Down and Meet My Maker suggest a slightly heavier Muse. Harder to Pretend recalls – of all things – Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking early 70s jazz fusion, while The Way It Breaks haunts as effectively as Disintegration-era Cure.
Loathe haven’t abandoned heavy music – the likes of Gemini and Revenant are granite-hard – but the frequent metamorphosis is underpinned by excellent songwriting. The wildest curveball, the plaintive The Ladder, is simply an astonishingly beautiful love song. In lesser hands this album could have been a ragbag, but the band’s bold vision is so masterfully executed it makes for a thrilling ride, in which you never expect what’s coming next.
English (US) ·