Albums of the Week: 29/03/19 (Brutus, Billie Eilish, I Prevail)

Brutus – Nest

8.5/10

Best Tracks: Cemetery, War, Distance

FFO: Blood Command, Black Peaks, Chelsea Wolfe

Belgian musical iconoclasts Brutus burst onto the scene (no pun intended) with their debut album in 2017, and it sounded like nothing I’d heard before. The band’s furious punk energy filtered through a soaring post-rock lens was something truly special, and on their sophomore album, Nest,  they’ve developed their sound even further.

The magnitude of this album, first of all, is mightily impressive. While Burst felt like a self-contained implosive blast, Nest explodes outwards, showering everything in its vicinity with shards of musical brilliance. The instrumentation is flawless and inventive, flitting between pounding, unstoppable, surprisingly heavy prog-metal-influenced punk rock and transcendent post-rock. When the two meet and meld, on songs like Carry and War, it’s a thing of beauty. The production, too, gives everything a sparkling, glossy sheen; the use of huge amounts of reverb and delay on the guitars and vocals not only adding to the huge scale, but painting the whole thing with a coat of silver. This stylistic choice, made in juxtaposition to a massive, rumbling bass tone and punchy drumming, is a big part of what makes the record so fantastic.

Drummer and vocalist Stefanie Mannaerts is at the eye of the storm at all times on Nest, lending the experience a beautifully feminine element, whilst simultaneously never backing down from ferocity and aggression. Her voice on songs like Fire and Distance is almost ethereal, evoking an artist like Chelsea Wolfe in it’s overarching melodic power and elegance. On a track such as Cemetery, on the other hand, she spits out each syllable with malice, especially on the repeated “It’s so funny! Ha ha ha!”, when each “Ha!” punches a new hole through the listener’s chest. To do all this while she’s blasting out some incredible, hard-hitting percussive sections is pretty mind-blowing.

Brutus, on Nest, offer something musically that no other band are even able to replicate. It’s a step up from their debut, and undoubtedly my album of the week.

Billie Eilish – WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?

6.5/10

Best Tracks: bad guy, bury a friend, ilomilo

FFO: Lorde, Halsey, Kanye West

Arguably the fastest-rising star in “alternative” pop music in recent memory, Billie Eilish made waves with her 2017 sleeper hit EP, don’t smile at me; a collection of catchy, charismatic tracks, released when the singer was only 15 years old. Since, she’s become a bonafide Gen Z icon, exuding genuine enigmatism and establishing herself as a notable personality in modern music. Her explosive growth has prompted speculation that she’s an “industry plant”, and that to some extent her success is undeserved, but essentially, the music is the focus here.

On this debut LP, Eilish comes across as far more artistically minded and intriguing than many of her contemporaries in pop music, whilst also succeeding more effectively in writing memorable, radio-ready songs. Her talent when it comes to technical vocal performance is undeniable, but it’s the unconventional ways she uses her voice which stand out; the whispered final verse on bad guy; the hypnotic panning on the chorus of xanny; the weird points in 8 at which she sounds… well, 8-years-old. Because her use of dynamics is always very subtle, and she sings very quietly across the record, the atmosphere created is, at points, almost claustrophobic, and even creepy.

Indeed, from a thematic standpoint, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP… is surprisingly dark in comparison to don’t smile at me, from the imagery and aesthetics to the lyricism and production choices. Eilish’s brother, co-songwriter, and producer Finneas O'Connell (who contributes just as much to the music as the singer herself), has a very distinct, bass-heavy, subversive take on typical pop melody and rhythm. It’s quite minimalist, and not overly experimental, resulting in certain tracks feeling a little dull (like when the party’s over and listen before I go). Overall, though, the instrumental aspect to the album is pretty admirable.

Fans of Billie Eilish will no doubt love this LP, and it does feel like quite a big “moment” in pop culture. To me, this record represents the possibility of an opened door for more interesting and alternative music to find it’s way to the top of the mainstream, even if it does only just scratch the surface itself.

I Prevail – Trauma

3.5/10

Best Tracks: Bow Down, Gasoline, Deadweight

FFO: The Word Alive, Issues, Post Malone

I Prevail are getting to be a legitimately sizable band at this point in their career, just this year securing a main stage slot at Download and a huge US tour supported by Issues. Personally, I’ve never enjoyed what they have to offer, but didn’t think it was too offensive; they seemed to fit in pretty well with the Warped-Tour-metalcore scene, but that’s a subgenre I haven’t really liked since 2014. I stuck on their new album, Trauma, because of the level of hype they’ve been causing among the rock press lately.

Listening to Bow Down (the first song on the record), I was very much pleasantly surprised. The track has an aggression that I didn’t expect, and right from the start the titular refrain had me hooked; the way it experiments a little with structure and takes influence from more technically-minded metal is really effective. The song has a lot more in common with a band like Wage War than, say, The Amity Affliction, not sacrificing the heaviness to cash in on a trend or try to force some emotional impact. That all being said, I’ve never been so misled by an opening song, and subsequently never been so disappointed by a second track on an album.

I’d thought that “metalcore” bands this formulaic and disingenuously zeitgeist-y had all but died out, but Trauma and the popularity of I Prevail proves that all they’ve had to do is evolve to stay on top. Aside from Bow Down, there aren’t actually any wholly enjoyable songs on this record. It’s all a fairly confused blend of meat-and-potatoes melodic hardcore, nu-metal style rap verses, and influence from the dregs of popular music today (namely Soundcloud-level trap and Ed Sheeran-esque balladry).  Some offenders are worse than others: DOA has uninspired radio rock verses (akin to Shinedown at their worst) and a recent-Fall Out Boy-inspired electronica-spiked chorus; Let Me Be Sad is like a B-Side off Linkin Park’s One More Light; the closer, I Don’t Belong Here, is a straining, autotuned, acoustic ballad with all the genuine passion of Mark Wahlberg in ‘The Happening’. Gasoline and Deadweight, on the other hand, both have something about them, as they more follow the same vein as the opening song, albeit to a less exciting extent.

In summary, I recommend giving Bow Down a listen, and then stopping there. It's unclear right now whether this is the last gasp of a dying sub-genre (as I hope is the case), or actually just the start of a new generation. Either way, count me out.