Album Review: Twitching Tongues’ Disharmony is Just Another Heavy Record
If more songs on Disharmony sounded like “Arrival,” I would probably get way more excited about the new Twitching Tongues record. That is to say, if more songs on Disharmony sounded like Michael Gira’s Swans, I could happily get on board this train and ride all forty-five minutes of it with a grin on my face and the wind in my… scalp. I guess I could just go listen to a Swans record, there sure are e-damn-nough of them, and I probably will go listen to a Swans record, but the point is that I probably won’t be listening to Disharmony. Let’s discuss why. But not, like, over-discuss. Let’s keep this short. There are Swans records to listen to.
The L.A. band’s mélange of metallic tones and styles certainly brandishes an attractively propulsive force. Everything is downcast and bludgeoning. Disharmony repurposes many sinister and familiar Slayerisms for its own gray-clouded grumblings. The songs are solid slabs of frowny conviction, and there’s a pleasant sonic depth and tightness to everything. That said, there’s also nothing flag-wavingly amazing to lift the music out of the morass of Just Another Heavy Record.
Also, Colin Young’s vocals can be hard to swallow. They’re not particularly extreme, but neither are they tuneful enough to reliably land any melodies. It leaves the band sounding a little like HoJo-era Killswitch Engage if Jones had taken the mike after overdoing the autoasphyxiation bit. Or maybe TT sound like a more metallically committed Stone Sour. Of course, this is all completely subjective, but that voice just nudges the whole TT vibe too far outside the range of what I find enjoyable. It doesn’t help that some of the lyrics and song titles revel in exactly the kind of quasi-vapid cliché wordplay that I always hated about the 90s pop-country songs my high school friends all listened to. “Insincerely Yours”? “Love Conquers None”? I guess “Cruci-Fiction” ain’t bad, but it also ain’t high literature.
And the line, “You fucked yourself trying to fuck me”? No thanks. That is some seriously bad aim.
Twitching Tongues’ Disharmony comes out October 30 on Metal Blade. You can stream the entire album here and pre-order it here.
