Review Summary: The future marches under the mark of horror.
Post-Punk is a vast genre, but people tend to focus on its most skeletal outlook and completely ignore all the subgenres. One such subgenre is Industrial Post-Punk, a largely electronic and dark affair that plays on rather dystopian atmosphere. The Canadian trio Odonis Odonis are a part of that movement, but on their latest album they decided to let the electronic components set the course to steer.
The affectionately named
No Pop lacks the band’s usual striking, albeit haunting songwriting and focuses more on the grim and bleak futuristic atmosphere. The tracks are not catchy, but it’s not like they try to be. In fact, they demand you to listen closely to the music that reeks of hostility. And even when that usual harrowing, but instantly memorable sci-fi horror songwriting Odonis are known for does kick in, it is still somehow slower than on any previous releases of theirs.
Take the song "Check My Profile", which has a clear and decent enough structure, providing us with the usual Odonis kind of beats and smashing electronic arrangement, but it somehow feels like it should be faster. Really anything in this album feels like it needs to be faster or at the very least combine those shrieking electronic sounds that made
Post Plague so great.
Songs like "Nasty Boy" or "Eraser" could be called the biggest successes on this album. Both songs are abrasive, visceral and viciously sharp. The noise and the menacing atmosphere on both of them is incredibly infectious. The strange distorted vocal disharmony punches like a boxing hook onto an unprotected jaw. It’s crushing and vivid.
On the other hand, songs like "One" and "Tracer" might just be the exact opposites. The songs are slow and patient with their build up, but the payoff never comes. It’s strange to ask for explosion, but if you build on people’s expectations of devastating payoff and then don’t deliver, they are bound to be underwhelmed. Both songs, while not boring or utterly forgettable, pale in comparison with even the highlights from this album alone.
The only song that sounds like it directly mirrors the band’s past work is Vision, a riveting piece of shredding electronic that rips and tears and leaves you bleeding with melted insides in a back alley of this rotten world of future the album paints.
In the end,
No Pop is two things at the same time; it’s both a severe slowdown from the band’s usual monstrous output and it is also just another instalment in the chronicles of those obscure, monolithic, noir, decadent futuristic worlds they portray. This is a bit of a slow-burner, but still a solid enough release.
