Every Time I Die - 'Radical' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Dark Distance

2. Sly

3. Planet Shit

4. Post-Boredom

5. A Colossal Wreck

6. Desperate Pleasures

7. All This And War ft. Josh Scogins (The ’68)

8. Thing With Feathers ft. Andy Hull (Manchester Orchestra)

9. Hostile Architecture

10. AWOL

11. The Whip

12. White Void

13. Distress Rehearsal

14. sexsexsex

15. People Verses

16. We Go Together

Radical is as good a title as any for this one. It’s been five years since the last Every Time I Die record and even though these Buffalo boys finished it in 2020 they’ve been letting it stew until they could give it it’s full live force, and I’m sure I’m just one of many who will tell ya, it was worth the wait. Because, yes, this thing is radical. As in; the heaviness is HEAVY.

If you get a physical copy of this one be careful when you start it up because opener 'Dark Distance' rips the damn thing open. It calls back to earlier in their catalogue in terms of big blunt karate kick riffiness just to make sure that you know they’ll still take no prisoners when it comes down to it. And the front half of the album is loaded in a similar vein with good, solid, hard-hitting songs that marry hammer blows and hooks in equal measure.

'Post-Boredom' was released as a single for a reason, it hangs out in the weird corner of Harder Rock territory and worms its way into your skull in a way not unlike later Refused or later-on-the-album guest star Josh Scogin’s work.

But back to the radical, one of the biggest and best consistent things about this band is the variety of textures and styles they incorporate into their music. These dudes are never going to be content with sitting still and they proved that there is a reason they’re on top of the whatever-core hill on Low Teens and they continue to do so here.

'Thing With Feathers' features Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull and is a daring move precisely because of its ability to work with beauty and restraint. Personally the band crafted one of my favorite songs in the history of heavy music with 'Map Change', and they dive headlong into that same scope of almost cinematic range with album closers 'People Verses' and 'We Go Together'. There are elements of Mathy brilliance and raging Thrash all throughout that underscore how tight of a unit the band is, and the pretty flawless changes into moments of melody and almost Prog (catch that mellotron on the last song!) hammer home that this is a group that has lasted as long as they have for a reason.

Keith Buckley will forever be underrated as a lyricist and writer to me until he wins some kind of Big Damn Award but he continues to outperform himself and take wordcraft in heavy music to a level of literate that cuts and twists and turns in ways that few, if any, are doing the same. I’m looking forward to diving into the lyric booklet on this one.

All in all, in a world that’s been turned on its head over and over like we’re all collectively falling down a flight of stairs, this is an immensely crafted piece of musical heavy machinery that pulls us along for the ride and knows it doesn’t need to let go. This is the sound of expert craftsmen firing on all cylinders and have a damn fun time challenging us all with it. They’re making sure that whether it’s testing their boundaries or having balls to the wall moshing fun, it’s going to be 'Radical'.