meth. - Shame

Angry Metal Guy 70

A fundamental part of being human is our never-ending growth and education. When last I reviewed meth. I was bowled over by the barbed dissonance and big noisy riffs. Mother of Red Light was a filthy brick of misanthropic noisecore that got me on challenging textures and sheer violent rage moreso than on the particulars of their songwriting. Since then, I have grown and I have learned. I cut my disso-teeth on Teeth and survived a full spin of Pyrrhon somehow. I come back to meth. a stronger, wiser frog. But the five fellows from Chicago must have grown, too, and I imagine the last 4 years must have done little to dull the edge of their vitriol. Does it still show in the music?

Yes, it does, and in a more compact, cohesive package to boot. Shame doesn’t ease you into the hot water. The very first thing that assaults your ears is a repeated chord like a stomping mech over scurrying drums while vocalist Seb Alvarez screams in your face. Aside from a brief breather, “Doubt” is a relentless meat tenderizer of incessant beating with dissonant interpunction. It sets the tone for an album that skillfully balances razorblade cacophony with industrial repetition. “Compulsion” starts off with a maelstrom of screeching and a swirling riff that sounds like a descent into hell, but the tight drumming and threadbare melody keep it from spiraling out. When the drums are going haywire on “Blush,” we’re riding a vocal intonation over the pit of glass shards. Though the tracks don’t adhere to verse-chorus structures much, repeated patterns reveal that the music contains actual hooks that makes it a surprisingly accessible affair for something so relentlessly hostile.

SHAME by meth.

Shame is a concept album written by Alvarez, the title referring to the weaponized guilt that marked his Catholic upbringing. His vocal performance matches the heaviness of the subject; one has to wonder how his larynx hasn’t yet burst with the raw screaming, garnished on rare occasions with howling, desperate cleans. The screams frequently function as an anchor when the music spins out of control, and provide an emotional depth that I didn’t get from the predecessor. Considering how effective the clean passages are, I do wish they’d been used just a little more often, as Shame is sometimes given to homogeneity. Its textural palette isn’t incredibly broad, and some tracks can get repetitive towards the end. While this is an effective tool for keeping the noise easy to track, it does incur a cost in variety.

Two things help with keeping this issue under control. For one, the band has gotten far better at concise, focused songwriting. Most tracks keep it well under 7 minutes, and the few that don’t still make good use of the afforded space and avoid feeling bloated. At 43 minutes and change, Shame is a perfect length, ending on a high note with the oppressive “Blackmail.” Furthermore, the sterling production makes the album easy to listen to without forsaking the grime. The grit on the guitars helps drive the dissonance and jangle the nerves, and the mixing is top-notch, giving enough space to everything to keep it from bleeding together even when the songwriting throws it all in the blender. A bit more low-end on the drums might have helped their impact, but considering meth. is more razor-wire than sledgehammer, it does fit the aesthetic to keep the master on the trebly side.

All in all, Shame is a small but definitive step forward for meth.. Though the experimentation of Mother of Red Light was admirable, the new album is altogether more focused and relistenable, and that can only help with the impact of the rather personal concept it contains. It took me some time to fully appreciate Shame, and it’s definitely not a record for everyone. The most hardcore disso fans might find it too accessible and hearkening too close to screamo, while traditionalists aren’t likely to vibe with the off-kilter textures. But those in between, like me, will receive a superb, harrowing treatise on the evils of weaponized guilt in the church, and should find its balanced songwriting and ragged textures more then worth their time.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Prosthetic Records
Websites: methil.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/methnoise
Releases Worldwide: February 2nd, 2024

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