Review Summary: Jackhammer-core
Oxidized is the aural equivalent of throwing a thousand
jackhammers off a cliff made of
jackhammers into a canyon full of
jackhammers, with each
jackhammer jack-ing and hammer-ing in a perpetual cycle of
jackhammer-y until the essence of existence is reduced to little more than the ceaseless echo of le
hammer de
jack. It is, in no uncertain terms, utterly
unlistenable ... which is exactly why you
should listen to it.
Pushing the boundaries of djent-y, math-y metalcore so far as to loop back around into
almost-psychedelica and
circa-industrial, Frontierer’s 3rd LP builds upon the mangled foundations of
Orange Mathematics and
Unloved exactly as you’d hope it would. Each track imparts its own unique lesson in how
not to write a comprehensible composition, shifting senselessly between every flavour of violently inelegant breakdown imaginable. The daunting “Glacial Plasma” is a worthy case in point, all jagged edges and bombastic barbed wire as the lads layer riffs over riffs over riffs. Angry calculator noises convulse in communion with equally agitated guitars across the remainder of the record - see the booming “Corrosive Wash”, breakneck “Disintegrative” and breathless “Southern Hemorrhage”, spliced together with such ferocity that you can’t really fathom what’s just transpired before you’re beat over the head with another mechanical
meltdown.
Breathers are passed out more frequently than usual for Frontierer, with
Oxidized sporting a newfound sense of patience in it’s songcraft. Sludge bubbles and static crackles between the beatdowns, with “LK WX” and “SVVANS” providing pummeling pauses of glitched out dissonance, seeping through the cracks of the sonic walls they sit beside. The album is at its best, however, when these two sides of
Oxidized collide. “Opaque Horizon” and “/Hope” do just this and, in melding the manic with the melodic, constitute all that I hope Frontierer becomes. The nastiest, gnarliest mathy riffage you’ll hear this year transforms without warning into the most
genuinely beautiful musical moments the band have ever put to wax, the scraping and clunking fading into ethereal, harmonic
bliss.
With these brief passages, it becomes clear that there’s more to Frontierer than meets the eye. Bedazzling and perplexing they remain, and most certainly still bleeding
noise, yet perhaps the future holds more than
jackhammers, jack-ing and hammer-ing,
forever. In the meantime, you’ll find me convulsing uncontrollably under the obtuse, absurd weight of
Oxidized. Pls send help.
