Review Summary: Like ships in the night.
Many a thing can be said about a guy like Jimmy Ryan, but the one I think of the most is “Unlucky”, for it is baffling how for a guy that works so hard and puts so much effort on all his projects, be it his tenure in Haste the Day or here, he never really seem to get the exposure they, in my opinion, rightfully deserve.
Which brings me to the most frustrating aspect of
Trenches, which is that they are, by all metrics, one of the most unique and innovative bands that has ever been deemed with the “core” suffix, as I still struggle to find any other band that is even close to replicate such a unique blend of Post-Metal and Metalcore in such a spectacular fashion.
Praise be where its due, The Tides Will Swallow us Whole was, at its time, an amazing palate cleanser, firmly set on doing its own thing back in 2008, here most of the Core scene was moving towards more technical wankery and/or outright arena rock, it was surprising even to find an album so set in its ways that it refused to acknowledge any of the current trends and looked back to what a different breed of metalcore could be, and then, there was nothing.
14 years, that’s how long it took for
Reckoner to be released, so what's new?
Honestly? Not much, which is about as good as it gets, let it not be misunderstood, Trenches are pissed, have remained pissed, and seemingly will continue to be pissed for as long as they release music. No time is wasted as Wrecking Age kicks the doors in and goes all out with Ryans trademark bark, however, about the halfway mark the song shifts to a more spacey ambient track and slowly fades out, all of this in the span of 1:19 minutes.
This will become a recurring aspect of this album as it will continue to play with the textures of long spacey post-metal outros, all carried by an insanely brutal and beautiful Rythm section, it’s quite refreshing to hear such established Metal tropes juxtaposed with Ryan and Co. Firing on all cylinders with the most straight-up Metalcore riffs and melodies.
Songs of particular notice are The Tides that Bind and The Death of all Mammoths, the former of which, in my opinion, is a worthy successor of the best riff this band has put out ever since Tip the Landmine came out, as it is choppy and dissonant and leaves no room to breathe, just a barrage of open string picking pummelling the listener, and the latter one being the sweet release, as it has some of the most complex and technical drumming in the record while keeping an insanely oppressive atmosphere.
This however, does not mean the album is without fault, as the band tends to seem to lose its footing around the midway mark, the most egregious example of this being Lenticular Clouds as it is a pretty dull post metal track that really adds not much to what has already been laid out by the band at this point and meanders for most of its runtime, which seems to be the Achilles heel of this band, as they seem unsure as to how to position the post-metal aspect their sound within the songs themselves (it also does not help that it is one of the longest tracks in the record)
All in all, it is a fair assessment to say that Jimmy Ryan and Co. Have put out an insanely fun album, that hits all the marks of what their project under Trenches strives to be, however, it seems that they are also starting to tread water with their sound, which is in my opinion, unacceptable when it takes the better part of a decade and a half to put out an album.
