Review Summary: Sweep me away to a dream.
Metalcore has been in a state of flux for quite a while. After the release of Northlane’s Discoveries, there was a significant portion of this decade in which nothing of much interest was happening to it. Bands left and right were launching rip offs of each other to no end. It’s not an altogether uncommon problem for a musical genre, but metalcore seemed to be particularly stuck. Whereas other genres have either innovated or died when faced with that problem, metalcore didn’t really do either. It got so bad that I nearly lost interest until in 2016/2017 when the genre started to finally inch towards evolution. The nu-metal revival sputtered to life, and mathcore lent a piece of itself to the sound. A smart, select, few bands capitalized on these sounds to make interesting records, but the evolution didn’t start to sweep the genre fully until recently. Thornhill seems to have missed the memo. Not by a lack of attention, but rather because they were so intent on pioneering their own sound, a sound that capitalized not on nostalgia, but on the sleek, emotive sound that ‘modern’ metalcore had originally seemed aimed towards.
I’ve been following these Aussies since late 2017, and I could always tell that they had a spark about them that differentiated them from their peers. You can tell as early as Views From The Sun which blends aggressive metalcore with hazy progressive choruses. There’s something almost cinematic about this album. The band presents a story, an ambitious choice for a debut album coming from a group of 20 year olds. Yet, they steal the show as if they’ve been doing concept albums for years. The Dark Pool really has all that an album from this genre could ask for. Coven offers blistering and springy heaviness, Red Summer delivers some tastefully emotive melodicism, and Where We Go When We Die effectively combines all of the elements to deliver an intoxicating monster of a closing track. It’s the sort of album that can be digested as a full story or as a set of singles, and that seems to be a rarity in the genre nowadays.
The production is crystalline clear, but not to the point of overproducing the grit of the sound itself. The guitars are certainly forecenter outside of the vocals, and there is almost a sort of blurry texture on them, but it works on building towards the hazy sound that the album invokes. All of the other instruments fit into the mix well with the occasional exception of the bass. It shines in subtle moments, but often seems lost in the rest of the mix, which is unfortunately a common problem in the genre.
This album doesn’t seem the sort worth diving into a track by track. It feels almost like reading a really surreal novel, the sort of story that transports you into its world and then promptly cuts your sense of reality. You’re left floating there underwater, deeply engrossed, but also a bit lost in the waves crashing above you. It’s hard to deep dive into this album because it’s conventionally phenomenal, but the strength is the interplay of that creative surreality. It’s that ability to pull the listener in and transport them somewhere far away. Somewhere where metalcore in 2019 can move in creative directions. Somewhere where it’s possible to be spirited away by an album. Somewhere where you can just relax, and just listen.
