INTO THE MOAT SET OUT TO MAKE YOU REGRET THAT YOU FORGOT THEY EXISTED ON THE CAMPAIGN
Into the Moat’s 2005 debut The Design knocked many on their collective asses with its combination of technical metalcore riffery and rumbling-of-Zeus breakdowns. Of course, repeated listens to this record yielded only a few good songs followed by a lot of thin, droll filler (and even those good songs grew tiresome after a while), as did so many technical metalcore albums from that period. It was hard to envision the band growing into anything more than squiggly guitars and thundering breakdowns, and the four year gap between The Design and Into the Moat’s latest, The Campaign, could have been assumed to be due to the band members focusing on their day jobs and letting Into the Moat fade into obscurity. Of course, they were honing their sound, turning a few monsters into a multitheaded beast. Though the dozens-of-time-signatures thing fizzled out a few trends ago, Into the Moat still manage to sound inventive and relevant, growing without having to make friends with 4/4 time or clean singing.
This isn’t to say the album is perfect; in fact, portions fall spectacularly flat, particularly when the band goes too straight up hardcore (the beginnings of “The Fuhrer” and “Grunt” feel like tired retreads and stick out awkwardly among the rest of the album’s abstract approaches). The transitions between ideas don’t work out every time, either. But, the album’s strong point is that they usually do work out. Though The Campaign is essentially a mess of guitar noodling, relentless drums, dirty bass, and hardcore grunting and growling, the band manage to wed most of the shards to one another, making the chaos into chaos you give a shit about. Even the two songs I mentioned above even out, with the latter reinstating the moshy sneering of their early work, but tweaking it to make sense in their new vernacular. The results are meatier, and hint at staying power.
The record’s biggest surprise, though, are the jazzy parts the band occasionally veers into. While the Candiria-aping masses milked this to death five years ago, Into the Moat revisit them and turn out fully realized jazz segues that work wonderfully as breathing room between spidery, atonal riffs. Perhaps this is a perfect metaphor for the band itself: while other bands have done their style to death, Into the Moat still have more to say. Even though the shelf life of a floppy haired, guitar-wankcore band is rarely 4 years – let alone capable of surviving a break that long– Into the Moat spent that time rebuilding and improving. They’re apparently in it for the long haul, and judging by the rich and diverse results of The Campaign, we’re lucky to still have them around.
(3 ½ out of 5 horns)
-SO
