CD Reviews – Comedian Without Waves

Exactly 5 years on from the discharge of their great “Lunar” debut, WITHOUT WAVES are in an uncompromising mood. “Good Grief” kicks off the Chicagoan quartet’s second album with a flurry of machine-gun riffs and cudgeling, syncopated beats, and the impression is straightforward. When the monitor takes a peculiar detour by way of dubbed-out post-rock sooner than exploding as soon as extra with way more unhinged depth, this band’s subversive streak is writ big all through every observe. You may even title WITHOUT WAVES a progressive metallic band, had been it not for the reality that no prog metallic band has ever appeared like this sooner than. Songs like “Animal Kingdom” and “.algorithm” are unashamedly extreme and often fiendishly superior, nonetheless as well as they refuse to be rendered monotonous by way of mindless aggression. On “Animal Kingdom”, haunting melodies get up from the multi-limbed battery of riffs and dissonance; on “.algorithm”, the fractious, blast-peppered groove that drives points alongside recedes midway by way of and nudges open a door into noirish, FAITH NO MORE-esque territory.

Lastly, you could possibly presumably tie your self in knots making an attempt to pin WITHOUT WAVES all the way in which all the way down to a particular subgenre or sound. At their most epic and exploratory, they sound like they’re having an obscene amount of satisfying: “Set & Setting” is an outrageous, seven-minute maze of good riffs, evocative dissonance and mellifluous vocal harmonies, all expertly blended for max theatrical influence, whereas “Do What Scares You” is a feast of bug-eyed macabre and mechanistic pounding with a tripped-out, psychedelic coronary heart. Most startling of all, “Sleight in Shadows” begins with luxurious vocal harmonies that seem to vow the arrival of some wildly accessible prog tune, sooner than a brutal, berserk torrent of fireside and brimstone breaks the spell. When that opening vocal riff returns on the monitor’s end, skimming alongside the ground of WITHOUT WAVES‘ eerily actual collective assault, it’s a stylish and audacious second to savor. In distinction, every the gently meandering “Day 15” and shimmering shoegaze waltz “Worlds Apart” present that this band could possibly be masters of restraint, too.

They reinforce the aim with slow-build nearer “Seven”: a merely magnificent, multi-part prog epic that builds and evolves with RUSH-like authority and solely a hint of insanity.

The world desires further music as liberated and fearless as this. Good, genuine and intermittently nasty ample to knock your tooth out, “Comedian” isn’t any laughing matter.

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