Modern Nature - The Heat Warps - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

A million sweaty punks can't be wrong SPIN MAGAZINE Inchthey've spent the past 16 years refining what a modern-day rock band could be... a surprisingly detailed and evocative world, just beyond the limits of rockInch PITCHFORK InchPile is one of the strangest bands in rock music, and one of the bestInch AV CLUB InchApocalypse-core stunnersInch BOSTON GLOBE Sunshine and Balance Beams, Pile's ninth album, is a Sisyphean parable concerned with labor and living. To write it, singer Rick Maguire inhabited Incha dark place,Inch wrestling with the concept that there is no enlightenment, no end to suffering. Maguire explores workaholism, the myth of meritocracy, and acceptance of mortality-all through a devilish allegory of trudging through a shadowy forest towards the uncertain dream of a bright clearing. Pile wrestles with existential and social contradictions by evoking sonic in-betweens. The music exists somewhere in the temporary equilibrium of light and shadow, chaos and order. Heated rain-like guitars, shifting drums that pave sinuous roads in sound and pace, eerie synths, and aqueous strings add to a panoramic production of loud-quiet dynamism matching the emotionality of the band's thunderous performances. The group also favored freewheeling performances that would animate the storytelling, while enlisting a string section (violins, viola, cello) to perform incandescent, through-composed arrangements co-written by cellist Eden Rayz and Pile. They drew inspiration from cinema and opera scores by Chopin, Bernard Herrmann, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, lending Sunshine a larger-than-life sound that intensifies Pile's blistering realizations of some of their most accessible songwriting to date. The recording is a noticeable leap in production value, and centers Maguire's vocals in new and exciting ways. Pile traveled to Pawtucket, RI for two weeks of tracking at Machines w

No Fixed Point In Space, the third full-length album by Jack Cooper's Modern Nature, takes the palette of sound and themes that were honed on 2021's Island Of Noise and launches them into an expansive world of openness and vivid technicolour. It's a music that hasn't been heard before; as melodic as anything Cooper has produced but framed by rhythms and instrumentation that reflect the chaos, unpredictability and colour of the natural world. InchWith this record,Inch Cooper explains, InchI wanted the music to reflect nature beginnings and endings, arrivals and departures, process and chance. I wanted the music and the words to feel like roots, branches, mycelium, the intricacies of a dawn chorus, neurons firing, the unknown. The way you see or hear music in your head is abstract and magic... often more beautiful than what eventually appears on tape. When you sit down with an instrument and begin translating an idea, it quickly conforms. I've tried to develop this music without thinking in terms of set rhythms, time signatures, folk or pop structures, syntax; the devices you associate with the music world which I come from. I wanted to make music that was abstract, free and honest, whilst still being predominantly tonal and recognisably song based. It feels like time to make something that no one has heard before.Inch

Mega Colossus - Showdown / High-octane melodic metal from the heart of Raleigh, North Carolina! / Sometimes, a good classic movie reference is all you need. Case in point, Mega Colossus guitarist/vocalist Bill Fischer who compares the band's new Showdown studio album to it's 2021 Riptime predecessor with a nod to an iconic series from the 1980s InchShowdown is to Riptime as Temple of Doom is to Raiders of the Lost Ark.Inch Fischer is spot on. Showdown takes Mega Colossus's brand of triumphant, big melodic metal to new heights without forgetting where the band came from. It's like the perfect sequel - but better! Recorded with Al Jacob at Warrior Sound in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in early 2023, Showdown catches Mega Colossus in full stride, expanding upon it's template of dueling twin-guitar harmonies and gallops. Buchanan's vocals (think of him somewhere between Diamond Head's Sean and Harris and Dragonforce's Marc Hudson) are strident and effortless, carrying forth grandiose, bold choruses that even possess the occasional Styx reference. But above all else, Showdown is the amalgamation of five very different musicians with something unique to offer to Mega Colossus. It is no wonder, then, that Showdown has emerged as an epic display of uncanny and striking melodic metal, with all the depth and charisma of a band now entering it's 20th year.