Nothing More the Stories We Tell Ourselves Review
Cypher More's marketing does them no favours whatsoever. They're certainly a unique proposition, fusing the most gimmicky hard rock and progressive stone with liberal elements of pop and electronica, but for some reason, stone's taxonomy has put them aslope far more basic bands like Five Finger Decease Punch and Papa Roach. That's not to snub either of those acts by whatever means, but considering the diversity and the off-kilter undertakings that Zilch More have made their forte – not to mention the sort of cluttered, unpredictable live performances that those bands tend to steer clear from – the but similarities are some variation of difficult rock and a vocalist whose ability really can't exist understated.
With that in listen, The Stories We Tell Ourselves seems to have the sole aim of hammering home how much wider Nothing More'south ideas stretch, an 60 minutes long prog-alt-metallic monster surrounding the working and alien machinations of the human listen. That might audio like a weighty task, peculiarly when a good proportion of this album'due south eighteen tracks are interludes, either instrumental or to detail some sort of philosophical musing about the cognitive processes that drive much of man thought. And even though it does take a couple of spins to click, The Stories We Tell Ourselves is actually an entirely accessible and enjoyable heed, for the key reason that it doesn't hinge on its concept to succeed. It's always there to match Jonny Hawkins' own histrionic vocal work, but he's such an expressive and magnetic performer in his own right that he's able to drive the gamut of emotions on show without tying himself downwards. Ability certainly isn't an issue – only take Let 'Em Fire, Become To War or almost any other track on here to encounter the astounding heights that Hawkins can creepo his vocals to – but the angles and directions he contorts himself in are more than impressive still, from harsh, stabbing rage on Don't Cease to mournful difficult rock belting on Still In Dear and naked vulnerability on Just Say When.
Of course, the rest of the band deserve a lot of praise here, especially because just how much goes into this album without sounding bad-mannered or forced. That's maybe strange to think about equally well, as at its core, The Stories Nosotros Tell Ourselves is congenital out of fairly straightforward hard rock tracks; from a constructional standpoint, the likes of Do You lot Really Want It and Funny Piffling Creatures have all the big riffs and monster choruses as the acts they're ofttimes grouped together with. The deviation is that Aught More take a grasp of a much wider breadth of styles that they utilise to their advantage, like the tumbling prog riffs and drumming on The Great Divorce, the clinical metal slam of Practice You Really Want It and Ripping Me Apart, the soulful acoustic Just Say When, and especially Don't Stop with its frigid, abrasive electronics that make way for crunching metalcore guitars. Information technology's astonishing that everything works as well as it does, but there's such an elegance to the style that Nothing More go nearly their cross-pollination of genres that never feels forced or clumsy. Even on a track like Tunnels that comes across as one of the more conventional cuts on the surface, there's still an underlying complexity to the guitar piece of work and a watery vocal filter that synthesise seamlessly with the rest of the rails.
And that's kind of the go-to view of Nil More than, a band for whom expectations offset out lukewarm at best, but that blow them out of the water with every listen. At least with The Stories We Tell Ourselves in that location was the benefit of greater prior exposure, and while this isn't the true masterpiece they're well and truly capable of making, it comes damn close withal. The affluence of interludes tin can admittedly feel trying and majority up to album to a level that tin can feel excessive, just with barely a bad song otherwise and that existence the only black marker on its record, The Stories We Tell Ourselves fully smashes the boundaries of hard rock for a fascinating and utterly spellbinding mind.
viii/10
For fans of: Karnivool, Starset, Highly Suspect
Words by Luke Nuttall
'The Stories We Tell Ourselves' by Nothing More is released on 15th September on Improve Dissonance Records.
Source: https://thesoundboardreviews.com/2017/09/13/album-review-the-stories-we-tell-ourselves-by-nothing-more/
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