With “Up On Gravity Hill” Metz reach the finish line of their fifth album, without considering a collection of outtakes, a live show and a couple of EPs. This is the first release after the solo debut of leader Alex Edkins, who in 2022 moved for the first time without the support of his historic traveling companions to create his “pandemic record” under the name Weird Nightmare. Experience repeated the following year with Noble Rot, a project in that case shared with Graham Walsh of Holy Fuck. At the same time, bassist Chris Slorach also temporarily dropped out to join the band lineup of the Armed, participating in the recordings (as singer and guitarist) of the appreciated “Ultrapop” and “Perfect Saviors”. But it is within Metz, in the trio completed by the prodigious drummer Hayden Menzies, that the new fathers Alex and Chris perform to the best of their ability.
Net of some obvious stylistic expansion, confirming the line taken in the two previous works, in “Up On Gravity Hill” it is not difficult to recognize the aggressive attitude of the Toronto group, which – as usual – serves a handful of songs of those that rock from the first note. Eight tracks branded again as Sub Pop, three of which were released as a preview, which confirm everything good that has always been said and written about the Metz, protagonists of an assaulting grunge-post-hardcore, which has always made us feel as if we were in the rehearsal room next to them. That raw and visceral sound, that ordered chaos, the result of Nirvana and of many works signed by Steve Albini, artists always rigorously “against”, just like them.
“Up On Gravity Hill” is a very solid album, which hits you straight in the face, thanks to powerful tracks of the caliber of “Glass Eye” and “Entwined”, but which manages to build a certain roundness in its own way radio friendly, as happens in correspondence with “Never Still Again”. Enriching the final result are the (all in all quite imperceptible) presences of Owen Pallett and Amber Webber, the former female voice of Black Mountain, a welcome guest in “Light Your Way Home”, an epilogue that differs from the rest of the album for head towards nu-gaze horizons, touching on the territory of Nothing, another group that in the new millennium participated in the revitalization and relaunch of matrix sounds nineties. In his spare time Edkins is also dedicating himself to writing soundtracks, but they are small deviations from the main road, the real game is always played in Metz, in these obsessive guitars supported by a devastating rhythm section. He is the charismatic leader and expressive voice of one of the bands with the highest average rating of the last twenty years.
04/16/2024
