there are p clear reasons why you'd prefer one over the other

go on

Album Rating: 3.1

kindly tell me what's going on here apart from an entire thread being stockholm syndrome'd by recency bias (i joke but also kinda not)

Album Rating: 4.5

Do I listen to Panic machine as a primer or a pallette cleaner afterwards? Hmmm

Album Rating: 4.3

bad luck is messy and excessive as all fuck vocally/lyrically even by jerry's standards (gotta love it) and a notably clunkier in its compositions than anything they've done since (which doesn't phase me too much bc most of the ideas are individually fab)

this on the other hand is smooth as it gets, not a second wasted, not a single Big Moment given more than the bare minimum of indulgence; much more disciplined songwriting. the arrangements are slicker and maybe more colourful than ever before, but the whole thing is mixed and paced in a way that rarely spotlights this. the concept seems much more action-oriented from what i can gather, but don't wanna comment too much on that until the lyrics are finally up

but yeah, anyone going into this expecting the same kind of kitsch overkill as anything from bad luck onwards will probs be disappointed (i was kinda miffed at first ngl); it's still here and i think the band are hitting a lot of the same beats, but they're playing it lean af rather than for cheap thrills and it doesn't sound like a demented pastiche anymore

and then there's the whole psych/spag western palette, which has a massively different flavour to anything on Holy Vacants

Album Rating: 4.5

^

This is a really great take.



This is not a good first listen, but it really opens up during additional listens, and thankfully its only 29 minutes long, so that's a pretty easy ask for it to make.

Album Rating: 1.5

wow avg

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

That Rowan assessment is p laughable for something so subjective

Album Rating: 5.0

I would like the record to state, which it already does, that I knew this was a classic before the hype.

Album Rating: 5.0

Feel free to snap a snort of my soundoff

Album Rating: 5.0

The band went on hiatus around Panic Machine (song details the struggles of being in a band) and they’ve only been working on this since 2019, with the pandemic presumably affecting the time it took to get it out, so I don’t think it’s fair to complain about the band taking seven years to put out another album when in theory there was a period when they weren’t going to make any new music period. Also wanted to mention the band said on FB that lyrics will be coming, “very soon”, and here’s a quote from them regarding the LP that goes with what Johnny was saying about not a second wasted:

“This is a record where we went heavy on making sure the only things that were left on the final tape were the truest and most necessary elements. This is us at our most refined. “Astral Pariah” is meant to be taken in as a whole and experienced as a feeling more so than separate pieces of music”

Album Rating: 5.0

This album is 100 nights in the same dive bar underground eating the best possible pizza and the same shit beer and coming out on top in the end.

Johnny your comments are simply too long I cannot read them.

Album Rating: 4.3

nice to have a lil balance between the lists of you-problematics and you-problems ngl

Album Rating: 4.0

Never really clicked with Holy Vacants but this absolutely slaps.

Album Rating: 4.0

Tbh lot of Rowan’s takes are pretty on point and why this ain’t a patch on Holy Vacants



Only point that’s missing is that most of these songs still bang pre damn hard

Album Rating: 4.0

After 1 spin I'm basically where Rowan's at, but it could grow, gotta wait and see. It's hard to wrap my head around people thinking this is better than Bad Luck tho. I need to relisten to their Never Born EP and HV, because I really didn't think much of those either bit didn't invest much time

Album Rating: 4.0

All Bad Luck->on Trophy Scars is pretty killer, but 4-5 times through I’d really only hold this above NBND, and even that just because Snake Oil trips over it’s own feet in the middle of the tracklist

Album Rating: 4.3

yeah, I'm probs in the same boat - feel this might edge out Bad Luck, but I'd only be confident in setting it over NBND rn (though by a fair margin - Snake Oil might be silly, but that closer is the worst thing to come out of this era of Trophy Scars, period)

Album Rating: 4.0

Lmao true Never Born sounds like a hotel ballroom band doing a Trophy Scars interpolation



(Still at least has melodeez over lemonade hair tho)

Album Rating: 4.0

I'm ngl a part of me also wants to dehype their stuff a bit because every time a new EP or album comes out the Sput community just insta 5s it. Kind of similar to Thrice in that regard