For 3 younger males of their early twenties, Black Midi have already coated quite a lot of musical floor. Their 2019 debut, Schlagenheim, embraced a twisted mutation of math-rock, jazz and post-punk, recalling Battles at their most discordant or a mutilated King Crimson. 2021’s Cavalcade was a extra all-encompassing tonal affair; alongside the frenzied assaults was a softer, extra melodic and sometimes poignant facet that confirmed they may veer into avant-folk territory as simply as they may pulverising noise-rock. They proceed on this unpredictable route right here, on their third album, seemingly on a campaign to sound like all genres but additionally none.
On the opening “Hellfire” they mix an nearly rap-esque spitfire supply of phrases – “a headache, a sore limb, an itchy gash, a mirage, a tumour, a scar” – excessive of a composition that encompasses theatrical piano, army drums, stirring strings and wailing saxophone. It’s a wild begin to an album made by a band who’ve chosen to wholeheartedly embrace chaos. Nonetheless, additionally they possess such clear expertise as musicians, delivering every be aware with sharp readability and exactness, that they handle to create a dichotomous type of exact mayhem.
Marta Salogni, who beforehand labored on Cavalcade’s opener “John L”, produces right here, and does a deft but dynamic job of bringing the band to life. The document is usually intensely busy – with tracks like “Sugar/Tzu” veering from tender and mild restraint to risky and discordant bursts of squealing guitar and drums – but it by no means sounds cluttered or messy. She’s capable of extract, and spotlight, the dysfunction whereas additionally emphasising area, permitting the document to swing from breakdown to explosion and again once more with grace.
Some moments of the document are so overblown, bombastic, theatrical, confounding and nonsensical – take the good “The Race is About To Start”, with characters that embrace Mrs Gonorrhoea, and which appears like somebody has by accident performed three totally different songs directly – that it will possibly really feel just like the band are taking the piss. And in lots of senses, they’re; concepts, lyrics and musical instructions that many teams might toss off for enjoyable within the studio however shortly discard as being too absurd are seen by way of to the bitter finish right here. The band themselves have stated as a lot: “Black Midi don’t count on, or need, you to take themselves or their music too critically. Black Midi’s music will be exuberant, cathartic, theatrical, comedian, absurdist, over-abundant, intense, cinematic, brutal.”
Black Midi’s artistic restlessness is mirrored within the huge shifts that happen inside the album. At instances it ricochets round so such – from the metal-esque riffage of “Welcome To Hell” to the acoustic skip of “Nonetheless” – that it feels whiplash-inducing. Equally, the lyrics and tales on the album lean extra in the direction of vignettes than they do a neatly packaged conceptual complete, even when hell in varied varieties is one thing of a recurring theme.
Usually what now we have are character monologues, with singer Geordie Greep stating “nearly everybody depicted is a sort of scumbag”; the narrative of the album glides from boxing-match drama to a fictional radio host introducing the band to confessions of a grisly homicide. It’s slightly like channel-hopping by way of a TV station programmed by somebody who has amalgamated the strangest corners of the world into one place. There’s no performative politics right here, no social commentary, no earnest private overspill, only a sequence of wierd tales that seize what a genuinely eccentric band, and lyricist Greep, are. His vocal supply matches this wild journey too, from idiosyncratic spoken phrase, to frenzied screams, to a genuinely tender, gentle and exquisite supply that even veers in the direction of a croon sometimes, as on the sweeping “The Defence”.
In the end, the distinctive factor about Black Midi is that regardless of the shock of their sound – an all-things-at-once post-genre occasion – Hellfire manages to retain an odd and hypnotic cohesion. They’ve managed to make tonal inconsistencies really feel like an precise consistency, quite than being a jarring and detracting expertise. They’ve wrangled chaos into submission, and at present sound like no different band on the market.
