Album Rating: 4.5

It’s unfortunate ‘The Race is About to Begin’ is by far the longest song here

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

Yeah, at least most of the rest of this is pretty short, that one has me tempted to hit the skip button after a minute or two.



Most of the rest of this I don’t hate, I just wish they had a bit more restraint.

They’re definitely an interesting test case in what people for so long thought was a tenet of composing “Western” music: tension and release, point/counterpoint. I’m not lucid I’ll try to think more about what I mean here

Album Rating: 3.5

This is gonna be an embarrassingly typical take for me but man “The Race Is About to Begin” fuckin sucks, the closing folk section is decent but the rest is just ugh



it is the best song on here for me ^^

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

Idk I feel like the first 2/3 of that one is just the worst of all their chaotic tendencies maximized. I’m still not sure how I feel about stuff like “Sugar/Tzu” and “Welcome to Hell” but they are definitely better for only being ~4 minutes.



I think for me though when it comes to louder/more abrasive music I prefer more repetition than these guys tend to go for on this one. Maybe I’m just a wimp but the softer moments here are almost always better if not as memorable necessarily. They’re clearly great musicians with a lot of interesting melodic/harmonic ideas but the songwriting and frequent OTT wackiness of the vox/lyrics atop it all is what tends to lose me. This is all on just two spins though so it could grow on me. I like enough to probably give it at least a 3. Still prefer Schlagenheim which tended to have more focused songwriting and more balanced (if somewhat more typical) tension and release.

Album Rating: 3.5

yeah, this is a quite reasonable statement

my advantage ist that i am really diggin those chaotic parts

but at the end this is more like a fun record to me, they need to improve in terms of songwriting in the comming records

as i said before, they are young and have a lot of potential ^•^



Schlagenheim was better tru, jamming it every few months or so

im sure that i dont will come back to this after a couple of listend in the comming weeks

@boney i don't get songwriting complaints for this at all outside of Race. Schlag was very on/off in that department and Cavalcade was a jankshop, but this has by far their most focused attitude to structure, storytelling and internal development. at this point, black midi *are* a wacky/novelty band writing wacky/novelty songs, so i think your gripes are better directed towards the direction of their writing rather than their craft as writers (with the obvious crit being that the two together basically entails a finely packaged run of cheap thrills). probably not at all helpful to see it mainly in terms of tension/release either - think you're just being filtered by the bombastic execution there
"prefer more repetition"
that route gave us John L, so i do not trust them with it one bit

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

Those are fair comebacks Johnny - it probably is much more a case of “this just isn’t my thing” than “they’re doing the thing they’re trying to do poorly.” Like I said I may just be too wimpy for this kind of stuff i.e. getting filtered like you say.



And yeah re: repetition I don’t need more like “John L” but I also don’t feel the key ideas of that song were all that good anyways from what I remember (admittedly I didn’t listen to Cavalcade more than a few times) hence not as deserving of the repetition if that makes sense. I feel like that album had a bit more abrasive tonality to it (or maybe just flatter production?) than this does too which didn’t help.

Album Rating: 2.0

'Idk I feel like the first 2/3 of that one is just the worst of all their chaotic tendencies maximised'

yeah it's unbearable even by their rather lowly standards

This album admittedly has passable moments, but that certainly isn't one of them

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

Another thing for me though as far as songwriting is concerned is that with music focused on storytelling I want to be able to make out the lyrics/story without reading lyrics alongside (and preferably with more minimal/less chaotic music that complements the storytelling) and it doesn’t feel like they usually strike a good balance with that here.

Tbqh FILTERED BY BOMBAST are words I'd love to have on my tombstone lmao
I feel its a mixed bag on the lyric-sheet front - 27 Qs, Liaisons, Defence and mayyybe Welcome to Hell/Sugar-Tzu all have narratives that translate pretty clearly to their arrangements, where I found the lyrics useful for depth but not necessarily orientation. Eat Men Eat and Race are opaque as all fuck though - I do think there's something to be said for writing on premises too weird or dense to be taken at face value/on record, but those two most cert aren't structured in a way that helps their case lol
The bigger issue is how dense the record as a whole is, I think - focus on any one song and it can kinda convey its story, but there's So Much Happening at such a similar level of loud postmodern kitsch shoutingthings that the threads seem to sprawl and merge and bleugh across the whole thing. Think the consistent goofiness of their delivery implies there's a continuity of character or setting hat there isn't or something, but I remember being mega thrown on first listen

I admire how you all have hyper detailed opinions about this record. it just whizzed by me, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

Those back half songs and “Still” are prob more balanced on the lyrical front for sure - those songs are certainly friendlier/more easily digestible than others. Agreed with the record as a whole comments too. I figure if I can stomach a few more spins some bits will unravel - but as luci says, I’m not convinced there’s enough to this music to be worth that. If I were more convinced it’s just supposed to be fun I’d be more willing to turn my brain off so to speak. Surely I could still take it as such regardless, but it seems something worth having an Opinion on given its reception elsewhere and the band’s general popularity. Ultimately I’m just a big fucking nerd who probably takes this all too seriously but alas that’s more or less the baseline for being on a site such as this.

Album Rating: 3.0

damn it I actually liked this a bit



the energy and instrumental arrangements of the first half were not only impressive but actually made me think "these guys have some fkn chops", unlike everything else I've heard from them so far



the second half unfortunately sank back into the slurry of unspired soft sections and avant-bombast that I disliked about Cavalcade

Cool instrumentals, vocalist ruins it for me though

Album Rating: 4.5

This is probably their best, though I do adore Cavalcade



Saw them live last night and they were incredible

Album Rating: 1.0

This band releases an album every year because it's easy to make shit music. Just a theory

Rx Nephew the exception that proves the rule

Album Rating: 1.0

Yes, and Sun Ra.

Meanwhile Tool waits 13 years to drop a new album and it’s worse than every black midi album