Uncomfortable Knowledge - Lifeline

Angry Metal Guy

I have a soft spot for young bands releasing records under their own steam. With the amount of time I’ve spent pooling money for too little studio time and going through sketchy post-production just to have a stack of records I end up giving away to friends and family, I feel a masochistic duty to tackle self-releases when the promo sump presents them. Today’s lucky candidates are the French quintet Uncomfortable Knowledge, with their second full-length Lifeline. Now remember, I’m the guy who gave Sodomisery his number one spot last year, so looking past an unfortunate nom-de-guerre is a superpower of mine. Lifeline’s promo sheet promises post-metal mixed with “baroque strings and dark film atmosphere,” more than enough to pique my interest. I’m still sore from a string of fair-to-middling albums recently, so here’s to hoping Uncomfortable Knowledge can transcend their moniker and deliver an album worth remembering.

Defining Uncomfortable Knowledge as a post-metal act is misleading. Although the band cite genre luminaries Cult of Luna in their for-fans-of—and they do sport plenty of quiet, reflective moments—rarely do they approach the sweep and grandeur of the Swedes. The progressive sludge of Baroness is a better comparison, but only as a template. Lifeline contains less moving parts than one may think, featuring a standard five-piece (two guitars) with programmed synths, the aforementioned strings, and a single, bizarre injection of brass (“149.6”). There’s an air of ‘00s “posts” in here as well: post-grunge showing up in the vocal styling of Guillaume Sabatier—more on this later—and post-hardcore in the hyper-simplistic breakdowns peppered throughout (“She Was The Moon,” “Blindfolded Fool,” “An Empty Heart Can’t Break”). Post-metal hits hardest when it strikes a balance between the ethereal and the crushing, and while Uncomfortable Knowledge have all the tools at their disposal, the execution leaves much to be desired.

There’s no two ways about it, Lifeline faces a monumental hurdle at the microphone. Opener “The Earth” sees Sabatier employing a full-voiced and partially pitched shout that, without false chord involvement, lacks any sort of expected grit or edge to match the intensity of a metal band. A majority of the vocal performance on this album is delivered in this abrasively off-putting style, and as much as I loathe to single out a musician for their artistic decisions, the impact on the makeup of the album is too great to overlook. I’ll admit the clean vocals fair a bit better, reminiscent of the monotonous drone of Vedder or Cobain, and create moments of promise for the band (“Lifeline,” “Echoes”).

Things don’t get much better when we turn our attention elsewhere in the music. While the spacious production is appropriate for post-metal—I admire the occasional background tremolos (“The Earth,” “149.6”)—the drums are over-processed and plasticky, as evidenced by the painfully exposed opening fill of “The Earth.” Rarely do Uncomfortable Knowledge stray from a numbing mid-tempo chug, and that’s unfortunate because when they do on “Blindfolded Fool” and “The Astral Mark” the tracks get a much-needed shot of vitality. I reserve my most stringent criticism for the “breakdowns”—these being the simplest ‘00s post-grunge iterations of the technique—culminating in the eye-raking coda of “An Empty Heart Can’t Break.” I’m sure the intention here is to create heaviness and headbangable moments for the listener, but the rhythmic decisions and tempo have the opposite effect, coming off as hackneyed and under-baked (“She Was The Moon,” “149.6,” “Blindfolded Fool”).

There are times in Lifeline that suggest all may not be lost for Uncomfortable Knowledge. The high-intensity opening of “The Astral Mark” or the single killer riff buried in “An Empty Heart Can’t Break” signal that the songwriting department can get it right sometimes. But these instances are few and very far between. The band has a mountain of issues to tackle, and sharpening the vocal performance is paramount amongst them. Instrumentally, exploring further than the shimmering ethereal atmospheres of post-metal and ditching the dated ‘00s hard rock tropes would be a good place to start in crafting a more original, convincing sound. While I wish the best for the unsigned band navigating the waters of modern metal, Uncomfortable Knowledge has unfortunately lived up to their epithet and will need to do a lot better on their next record to draw my gaze again.

Rating: 1.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Self Released
Websites: uncomfortable-knowledge.com | facebook.com
Releases Worldwide: February 2nd, 2024

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