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This Will Destroy You, "Another Language"
For their fourth studio album, this Texan combo retains their guitar-centric post-rock approach but expands more into abstraction and dissonance amongst these nine instrumental compositions. Shades of shoegaze and electronic ambient pepper the pieces, but the TWDY do an exceptional job at making sure the record is one that is impossible to easily categorize.
The drastic within-song changes that appear on this album are the moments that I found particularly fascinating."New Topia" begins with gentle guitar melodies from Jeremy Galindo and Chris King, accented by subtle electronics before bursting open at the midway point.The gentler stuff is still there, but overpowered by rapid-fire drumming and heavier guitar sounds.The band’s way of transition from peaceful to explosive while still maintaining a consistent composition is expertly accomplished.
That dynamic shift appears in a few other places throughout the album as well:the snappy drum loops of "Invitation" might at first contrast with the gentle guitar passages, but throughout an all too short four minutes the band builds layer by layer into a dramatic coda.This makes for a climax that retains beauty from before, but with an unparalleled force and intensity.That transition from gentle to heavy also is apparent on "Serpent Mound," although its change from fuzzy guitar and tasteful overdriven noise into slowly shambling noise rock is not quite as dramatic.
This change in structure is not a gimmick, nor is it overused on the album.For its first half, "Dustism" has the band mixing dubby echoed drums and insistent cymbals with quiet guitar, with a just slightly out of tune quality that is reminiscent of recent Jesu works before the band uses the second half to shift up the rhythm.It is comparably a minor variation, but one that goes a long way within the piece and is extremely effective in keeping it interesting.The albums conclusion, "God's Teeth" is the most expansive, with the band using less of the fuzzy ambient haze that drenches most of the album.Building from gentle and delicate guitar sounds, much of the piece is slow and pensive.In its closing minute, everything decays to a fuzzy, noisy mass that could almost be a tape melting.
This Will Destroy You have never been known for overly subdued works, and Another Language continues their tradition of grandiose, yet tasteful cinematic works.Even with all of this drama injected into four to seven minute segments, the subtlety and nuance of their songwriting results in a record that succeeds on multiple levels, not just in sheer force, but also in the tiny details that surround the bombastic moments.
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