Review Summary: Variations on a theme.
Hail the Sun have been steadily dialing in their brand of (word-vomit) progressive Fall of Troy/
Deloused-era Mars Volta-influenced
rockpost-hard
swancore (ha!) for well over a decade now, but the group has really settled into a consistent groove over the past few years, starting with 2021's
New Age Filth. 2023's
Divine Inner Tension only had to tighten a few bolts and don a more frenetic mask to result in what is arguably their most confident effort to date.
cut. turn. fade. back. now continues this exercise in incremental change, once again taking measured steps to iron out the edge of their formula while sprinkling in a few trick-or-treats here and there like breadcrumbs for starved peasants. Funny how the feudal lords starve us of change, hey?
cut. turn. fade. back. might be the band's heaviest and most streamlined album to date, but only marginally so.
Regardless,
cut. turn. fade. back. is a consistent, high-quality Hail the Sun experience that manages to serve up eleven more hook-driven anthems that all feel relatively distinct from one another despite the structural fabric of the record feeling almost identical to
Divine Inner Tension (the odd cringe lyric from Donny being included for free of course). Where the album does show its independent merit is largely in the production, which is evident in the first few tracks, especially as the dense low-end and use of synths in "The Drooling Class" and "Live Forever" make the band seem larger and more symphonic than ever before. "Blight" stands out for having perhaps the heaviest verse riff in their entire catalog, and I can't forget to mention how delightfully MCR-coded the chorus of "I Can Tell By The Scars" is. Some real
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge-type ***.
Lead single "War Crimes" closes off the album with another adventurous track that layers the band's usual fare of bouncy aggression with thick synthesizers, but alas, these production techniques are used sparingly, and Hail the Sun ultimately falls back often on songs that sound like they could be B-sides from any of their past three or four records at least. Perhaps the band's reluctance to lash out and take real songwriting risks is verging on tiresome, but this is very much an "even their worst is better than most" type of situation, and this is far from their worst. Why fix what isn't broken, I guess.
