STACK NZ Oct #67

MUSIC

REVIEWS

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Also Spinning City And Colour If I Should Go Before You

Labeled as a ‘folk’ artist, here you’d be excused for thinking Dallas Green (the man behind the moniker) is a huge star from the late ‘70s, delivering tales of loves lost and unrequited, with a sound that licks

your ear. You can picture him sitting on a stool singing the title track: it’s late and the bar is full of lost souls enveloped and swaying within his spellbinding truths. You cry, you understand, you lament – and then you buy his CD on the way out, as it’s now the soundtrack to the rest of your misery and hope. Yes, it’s that good. Chris Murray Slayer Repentless Repentless comes with an insurmountable amount of baggage. It’s the first Slayer album minus the late Jeff Hanneman and it features the return of drummer Paul Bostaph, after Dave Lombardo's incongruous departure. The question is, does Repentless deliver? Well, it’s easily Slayer’s strongest album in a long while and possibly the band's best since 1994’s Divine Intervention . It’s not all good – a number of songs should have remained in the rehearsal room – but for what it’s worth, Repentless is a solid effort from a band who have experienced better days. Simon Lukic Atreyu Long Live Credit where it’s due: Atreyu are one of the OG, founding fathers of metalcore. They were the perfect embodiment of the genre in the '00s and thus it only seems fair that after a brief respite from world tours they reform to create an album called Long Live . Fans will be thoroughly satisfied with this unexpected extra helping, that sounds precisely like the crunching Californian metal our teenage selves fell in love with 15 years ago. Emily Kelly

EL VY Return To The Moon Right, so what have we got here? Sounds like some kinda concept album about a kid from the American mid-west, swirled into a lament for the late D. Boon of art-punks Minutemen, during which our narrator engages in a dose of self-mockery about his own star status. So far so Matt Berninger of The National. Except this project is as much about Brent Knopf of Menomena fame, who provides the

soundscapes for Berninger to flourish over. And whilst it inevitably feels like The National in parts, there’s a sonic diversity on offer which places Berninger’s voice and wordplay in challenging new settings. The title track with its fairytale lyric may be a perfect slice of indie pop, but much of what follows is far from predictable. I’m the Man To Be pairs an explicit chorus with a clubby dubby vibe; Paul Is Alive is all vintage keyboard noises and programmed beats; Happiness, Missouri swaggers like a real dancefloor filler and Sleepin’ Light is soulfully smooth. Lyrically, the recurring theme seems to be family and memory. Berninger references a "sugar-coated childhood" and declares, "I’d never been so alone/ 'Till I read that the Minutemen were dead." Typically he’s already declared it to be autobiographical whilst saying the details aren’t true. But, what the heck: if this is the future of concept albums, let’s all get ready to be linked in. GarethThompson

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OCTOBER 2015

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